f useful
things, while others are allowed to return to their primitive elements.
When spring comes smiling o'er the earth, she breathes on the ice-bound
waters, and they flow anew. Frost and snow retreat before her advancing
footsteps. The earth is clothed with verdure, and the trees put forth
their leaves. Again, a few short months, and where has all this beauty
fled? The trees stand firm as before; but, with every passing breeze, a
portion of their once green leaves now fall to the ground. We behold the
bright flowers, which beautify the earth, open their rich petals, shed
their fragrance on the breeze, and then droop and perish. Sad emblem of
the perishing nature of all things earthly. May we not behold in the
fading vegetation, and the falling leaves of autumn, a true type of
human life? Truly "we all do fade as a leaf." Life at the best is but a
shadow that passes quickly away. Why then this love of gain, this thirst
for fame and distinction? Let us approach yonder church-yard and there
seek for distinction. There we may behold marble tablets cold as the
clay which rests beneath them: their varied inscriptions of youth,
beauty, age, ambition, pride and vanity, are all here brought to one
common level, like the leaves which in autumn fall to the earth, not one
pre-eminent over another. The inspired writers exhibit the frailty of
man by comparing him to the grass and the flowers withering and dying
under the progress and vicissitudes of the year; and with the return of
autumn we may behold in the external appearance of nature the changes to
which the sacred penman refers, when he says, "So is man. His days are
as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind
passeth over it and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no
more." Autumn too, is the season of storms. Let this remind us of the
storms of life. Scattered around us, are the wrecks of the tempests
which have beaten upon others, and we cannot expect always ourselves to
be exempt. Autumn is also the season of preparation for winter. Let us
remember that the winter of death is at hand, and let us be impressed
with the importance of making preparation for its approach. Let us then,
as we look upon the changed face of nature, take home the lesson which
it teaches; and, while we consider the perishable nature of all things
pertaining to this life, may we learn to prepare for another and a
happier state of being.

WANDERING DAVY.