AN OCTOBER DAY 
17 
their love call and the mating season has passed. 
A mud turtle lazily splashes from a rock into the 
water and a seedpod overhead bursts and drops 
a seed at your feet. You hear a rustling over the 
dry leaves and look up to see a gray-tailed squir¬ 
rel hastening, nut in mouth, toward his winter’s 
hoard, setting man the example for life’s winter. 
The jewel weed has burst its last pod and stands 
bare with its seeds scattered in a big circle. 
Most of the birds have gone, but not all. The 
tap, tap, tap of the wood-pecker is heard, and the 
harsh call of the blue-jay. A flock of crows are 
holding an afternoon praise-meeting a hundred 
rods away. A score of migrating robins, fat and 
chirping, flutter down from near-by trees and drink 
at the brink of the river. Farther on the splen¬ 
dor falls, not on castle walls or snowy summits, old 
in story, but on tree-crowned heights unmarred by 
hand of man since Indians sat among them and 
told the legends of their tribes. The long light 
shakes across the faintly tremulous river. You 
give a great shout and listen to hear the purple 
glens replying and the echoes dying, dying — as 
the day and year are dying, slowly, sweetly, grand¬ 
ly, like a good man whose life has borne the fruits 
of honesty, kind words and helpful deeds, and who 
is going serene and unafraid to his long winter 
