ere is the cornel, whose
lovely blooms filled the forest with butterfly beauty, it seems no
longer ago than yesterday. Today I find the cornel foliage green
still as to midrib and veining, but with the woof of the leaf gone
such a fine apple red that it is surely good enough to eat. If
color counts the deer should find rich browse in the shrubbery
these days. The hazels that were so green are suddenly a ripe
brown that is all warm with red tones, and where the summac grows
there is forest fire without smoke burning in the scarlet
flame-tongues of the pointed leaflets of this modern burning bush.
And all this is beneath the shelter of the still green forest into
which we must go to find it. From without the full green of summer
ripeness prevails, and we must seek other signs of the autumn
season.

But must we, after all? Yesterday or the day before it was true
and we were saying that the summer held on well. Today, so
suddenly does the change seem to become visible, I saw them blaze
up out of a cool swamp at the foot of the hill on which I stood.
The smoke of autumn's peace pipe was blue on all the distant
hills, and he must have dropped his match in my swamp, where it
smouldered and flared and caught the maple even as I looked in the
full expectancy of seeing nothing but green. The red fire of
greeting seemed to run from tree to tree, and all the lowlands for
a mile were ablaze, as if some subdominant political party had won
an unexpected victory and could not wait for night to light its
fires of celebration. All the little swamp maples were red with
this fire, and though I suppose they have been days in turning the
effect was that of their flashing up as I looked. Then I saw that
the birches among them were all set with candles, whose pale
yellow flames lighted them with a most chaste fire, just as in the
old days of torchlight enthusiasm over political campaigns we used
to put rows of them in the windows on the night that the parade
was to pass. Seeing all that I felt as if autumn were again
triumphantly elected, and we all ought to take off our hats and
"give three cheers far the illumination on the right."

*****

Surely autumn is the finest season of the year. I always know that
as soon as it gets here. Yesterday I revelled in the summer that
had stayed with us so long and, still seemed to show few signs of
going. Today the fall coloring is burning, like a wood fire on a
still day, slowly up from the swamps i