with excitement, as he
watches the noisy chatterer overhead! No doubt the squirrel will brag to
all his acquaintances of how he openly defied and triumphed over his huge
enemy.

A chestnut bough swings low, and with hospitable hand proffers a
half-open burr, out of which shine the glossy brown nuts. Sweet is the
taste of the nuts. Sweet is the crisp red apple into which we bite, and
with just a hint of the flavor of stolen fruit.

What audacious pen will try to reproduce or even dryly catalogue the
glories poured out for eye and ear, for heart and brain, upon a bright
and cool September day? The deep-glowing sumacs, the asters purple and
white mixed with flaming goldenrod, in a splendid audacity of color such
as only One artist dare venture on; the occasional dash of scarlet upon a
maple, a first wave of the great tide that is sweeping up to cover the
whole north country; the masses of yet unbroken green left neither dimmed
nor dusty by the generous, moist summer; the oaks that will long hold
their green flag in unchanging tint, as if "no surrender" were written on
it, and then, last of all the trees, change to a hue of matchless depth
and richness, like the life-blood of a noble heart that shows its full
intensity only just before death's translation falls upon it; the
separate tint of each leaf and vine, "good after its kind;" the soft
whiteness of the everlastings in the hill-pastures; the reaped buckwheat
fields heaped with their sheaves, stubble and sheaves alike drenched in a
fine wine of color; the solemn interior of the woods, with the late
sunlight touching the shafts of the pines; the partridge-berry and the
white mushroom growing beneath, as in a cathedral one sees bright-faced
children kneeling to say their prayers at the foot of the solemn pillars;
the masses of light and of shadow--one cannot say which is the
tenderer--lying on the cool meadows as evening draws on; the voice of
unseen waters, the voice of the wind in the pines.

And so, with song, with autumn colors, with sunset lights, the Mother
calls her children home.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Chief End of Man, by George S. Merriam

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHIEF END OF MAN ***

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