A Window in Arcady 
to the great satisfaction, you may be sure, of Br’er ’Possum 
who finds them mightily to his taste. 
Twice a year the tangled country lane takes on a special 
grace; first, when April spreads a golden mist of bloom 
over the spicewoods and sassafras, and again when the 
early days of autumn come. By this is meant not the 
autumn of the calendar so much as of nature. It is as 
Thoreau says, the fall comes in a night, but we cannot fore¬ 
tell what night. We were languidly aware of its being 
summer yesterday, but this morning, though it may still 
be August by the almanac, there is a new quality in the air, 
and we grow suddenly conscious that the tangles of our 
old lane are blushing with the first colors of the coming 
autumnal glory. Glowing purple within leafy coverts the 
fox grapes hang, and to the damp air of evening their 
musky fragrance lends a delicious sweetness. On bitter¬ 
sweet vine and sugarberry bush the orange-yellow berries 
are set thick, and the sumacs have donned their crimson 
caps and lord it right royally over the humbler golden 
rods. 
The everlastings are in bloom now in the lanes and old 
fields. There are a number of species of these, the small 
white flower-heads of one of which—the pearly everlasting 
—are familiar sights in the make-up of the funeral 
wreaths and crosses of the florists’ shops. The purity of 
the pearly spheres, each surrounding a tiny tuft of golden 
yellow florets, is very captivating. There is an ethereal 
sort of pallor about a patch of these plants in bloom, which 
has probably suggested the fanciful name of “moonshine” 
by which they are sometimes known in the Pennsylvania 
[86] 
