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294 this warmer air that creeps about the sunny terrace and south side of the house. The trees are still bravely clad, although the finger of decay has touched their greenness here and there into flaming scarlet and vivid yellow; the birds are singing loudly and jubilantly enough, but somehow their notes do not seem to be as sweet and joyous as they were a little while ago. To them the summer meant warmth and comfort, the fruits of the earth fed them, the nights gave them shelter, but with the first breath of the frost-king they see hunger and cold stretching out before them, and the iron hardships of the long winter; at least, so their song seems to say to me as I listen. On the upper terraces, and in the glades that the sun's eye cannot reach, since the screen of leaves above is so thickly woven, the hour might be six o'clock in the morning, not ten, and there is as yet some of—

And of the few scanty autumn flowers left I make myself a posy and fasten in my belt.

I wonder why one feels so much brisker, fresher, brighter, in time of autumn than in time of spring, which is so infinitely lovelier and more grateful to us? Somehow these trees, whose leaves are dying in such splendid livery of gold and sepia, crimson and brown, strike no pang to our hearts; they do not suggest unpleasant thoughts of our own decay; on the contrary, we walk erect and cheat ourselves with the vain belief that, though all things fade, yet do not we; or, at least, not now. How we cling to our little atom of life, that is so small and yet so huge, and, placed directly before our eyes as it is, assumes grand proportions that block out the far off and dimly seen plains of eternity—very misty, very vague, are they to our earthly, filmy eyes. Religion bids us hold ourselves ready to quit at any moment the world and every-