f I ever knew; but in my judgment, he was
all wrong. Dark days there are--damp, chilly, misty, wet, and
unpleasant days in autumn; days that make one relish a corner by an
old-fashioned fire. There are gusty, windy, capricious days in autumn,
which nobody cares to praise, when the northwest wind goes sweeping
over the forest, roaring among the trees, and whirling the sere leaves
along the ground, and which, to tell the truth about them, are
anything but pleasant. But 'some days _must_ be dark and dreary,' and
they serve to give the sunlight of a bright to-morrow a keener relish,
and a lovelier comparative beauty. To call the fall days the 'saddest
of the year' is an absurdity, poetical I admit, but still an
absurdity. There is nothing sad in a cold, or a wet, a drizzly, a
gusty, or a stormy day; much there may be that is unpleasant, much
that one may be disposed to quarrel with, but they are anything
but sad.

"A calm autumnal day in the country is a great thing, a beautiful
thing, a thing to thank God for; a thing to make one happy, buoyant of
spirit, full of gratitude to the great Creator; a thing to make one
merry, too, not with a loud and boisterous mirth, but with a heart
full to overflowing with cheerfulness, and a calm joy. To see the
bright sun standing in his glory up in the sky, shedding his placid
light over the earth, when the air is clear, the winds hushed, and the
leaves are still and moveless on the trees; and then to look along the
hillsides, and mark the bright sunlight, and the deep shadows, the
green of the fir, the hemlock, and the spruce, the yellow of the
birch, the crimson of the maple, the dark brown of the beech, the grey
of the oak, the silver glow of the popple, and the varying shades of
all these, mingling and blending in all the harmony of brilliant
coloring. Why, these hillsides are decked like a maiden in her beauty,
like a bride robed for the altar! Talk about springtime, or summer!
Green on the hillside! green in the meadows and pastures! green
everywhere--all around is changeless and everlasting green! as if
hillside and valley, forest and field, had but a single dress for
morning, noon, and night, and that only and always green! True, there
is the music of the birds, joyous notes and variant, happy and
hilarious, in the spring-time, but there is no cricket under the flat
stone in the pasture, his song is not heard in the stone wall, or in
the corner of the fences; no music of the katy