THE VINTAGE OF THE LEAVES. 181 
After breakfast I climbed the ridge behind 
the Chocorua House and sought a small beech 
grove on its crest. In the pasture one of the 
hawkweeds, two goldenrods* autumn butter¬ 
cups, yarrow, the red and the white clover 
were still in bloom, sparingly, of course, and 
only in warm corners, but still clinging bravely 
to sunlight and life. Crickets and small green 
locusts were active and noisy. They frequented 
hollows in the pasture surface, where beech 
leaves had blown and lodged among the dry and 
matted fern fronds. Lying in one of these 
hollows, which made a warm dry cradle, I 
watched the locusts hopping from leaf to leaf, 
crawling along the warm faces of lichen-crusted 
boulders, and now and then working their 
bent legs up and down, while their fine, stri¬ 
dent music fretted upon my ear. Some were 
green, some brown, both large and small, some 
almost buff, tiny, and very agile. They were 
not the only insects enjoying the sunlight, for 
spiders, house-flies, now and then a bee, small, 
gauzy-winged flies, and many a queer and, to 
me, nameless thing, with nervous antennae, 
passed that way by wing or foot. At a spring 
in the woods where I drank of icy water, count¬ 
less hosts of springtails or bristletails skipped, 
in sprightly humor, over the leaves and the 
surface of the pooh About noon I saw a 
