holding
plentiful leaves whose green is dulled by a little, and otherwise
defies the season. The bayberry has leaves as glossy green and
unmarked by any sign of approaching winter as it held in August,
and though the taller wild cherry trees show autumnal tints the
younger ones are still in fresh green. This tendency of the young
sprouts to hold on and deny the winter I note on many young trees.
The birches are in the main bare but the young wood at the very
tops, and the tips of sprouts from the stumps of trees that have
been cut, still hold leaves whose pale yellow simulates flowers,
as if the trees, like the witch-hazel, had decided to bloom only
at the very last moment, preferring the Indian summer to that
which came to us in the full flush of June. So it is with the
blueberry shrubs. The pinky-red top twigs hold their foliage still
but they have sent some of their own flush up into these leaves
and they hang there like pasture poinsettias, waiting to be part
of the red of Christmas decorations. The meadow-sweet is in the
bloom again, but instead of pinky white racemes topping the
whorled green on its brown stalk the leaves themselves bloom in
pale yellow with pinky flushes that make it as truly a sweet thing
of the meadow as when it called the bees in July. The red alders
add the coral of their berries and the barberries give the deep
rich red of their fruit through which the sun shines with the ruby
effect of stained glass windows, The November pasture is less
profuse in its colors than it is in earlier autumn but one sees
farther in it, and clearer. There are times when the gray walls of
its maples and hickories stand illumined by the sunlight slanting
through the vivid colors of its remaining foliage till the place
glows with rich lights and seems a cathedral in which one ought to
be able to hear the roll of anthems and the chant of bowed
worshippers.

Such are its changing moods on November nights and days. The
constant features are the pines and cedars. Summer and winter
alike these stand unchanged, types of constancy and vigor. Yet,
though there is no change, one who loves them both can at a time
of year see a certain variation. This comes with the spire-like
cedars, that stand so erect and point ever heavenward in close-drawn
robes of priestly solemnity, in early May. Then for a few
brief days the glow of spring sunshine gets into their blood and
they gleam with hidden bloom through the olive green of th