THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES . 179 
downward, with even march across their flanks, 
their projecting spurs, then the nearer hills, 
the lake, and river hollow, and finally over the 
great reach o£ woods and field nearest to me* 
In summer nearly the whole of this wide land¬ 
scape is green or grayish green. In winter it 
is white, grayish brown, and dark green. Early 
autumn dots the woods with vivid points of 
scarlet and gold which stand out sharply from 
the mass of green; but as the sunlight crept 
downward over this late October foliage the 
prevailing color, which glowed forth full of 
strength, warmth, and meaning, was red, — the 
red of dregs of wine, of iron rust, of sleek 
kine, of blood. Intermingled with it were bits 
of golden or of sulphur yellow, marking birches 
and poplars, and in the pastures a few maples 
late in turning blazed with fiery scarlet as 
their fellows had weeks earlier. 
The warmest of the color came from the 
oaks, but the beeches supported them with 
generous pigments, and so did the masses of 
blackberry vines, choke-cherry and huckleberry 
bushes, and other small shrubs which had 
turned crimson, red, or madder-brown under 
the October sun. Sweet-fern bushes, brakes, 
ferns, pine needles, many of the grasses, and 
most of the fallen leaves constituting the greater 
part of the earth’s carpet, answered the sun’s 
