bed, here shallow over
the sand, there darkling in a still pool, now making a green
willow-shaded island, and now a deep rock-bordered channel, doing its
best with the various graceful devices of a happy little stream to
compensate for the absence of the river, to whose former existence the
cliffs bore silent witness and the pines testified in sighing
lamentations all the day long. On the east the lake swept inland in a
gradual curve to the piers and wharves of a city with a cloud of smoke
hanging above its spires, and then outward again to a wooded point
twelve miles away, the eastern boundary of the bay. Looking north, we
could see only water, apparently as deep as the ocean: no land was
visible on the Canadian horizon, no island to break the harmony--nothing
but vessels sailing gayly toward the east or tacking patiently toward
the west, some distinct and snowy, others dark in the distance, and all
with the graceful rigging peculiar to the lake-craft. Although November
was far advanced, the warm sunshine and soft breeze gave no indications
of approaching winter: the leaves had fallen from the trees and lay in
brilliant heaps upon the ground, and children running through the groves
waded in their glowing masses and tossed them high in the air with many
a shout and half-finished song. The bare branches basked motionless in
the hazy warmth, and the brown and empty farm-lands expanded their broad
breasts to the heat, the care of the crops well over, the last sheaf
safely housed and their labors ended. Nature works hard in these Western
fields, conquering them from the forest, redeeming them from the swamp
and tending the delicate grain amid the rank growth of prairie-grass;
but when the last load is driven home and the last leaf has fallen, then
she rests, and the hazy atmosphere and peculiar stillness mark her
repose. Indian summer! what is it? It is Nature's _dolce far niente_,
her one holiday. Wise will he be who, working with her through the
dreary winter, the budding spring, yes, and even the sultry summer,
earns the right to rest with her in Indian summer, the vacation of the
year.

We had come from the East to visit friends at the West, from a venerable
village on the Atlantic Ocean to a new city on the Western lake-shore;
and although we acknowledged that the country was advancing with the
strides of a giant, we also maintained that the charm of old
associations, the mystery of the past, the interest of stirring e