Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/184

 OW that the “mellow Autumn days” have come, if you are longing for—

then come to my beloved Oregon hills. All for which you long is here; and far more, now that Autumn is abroad in the land, standing tiptoe upon the hilltops, pouring down their slopes “from a beaker full of richest dyes” a flame that setteth the mountains on fire and maketh a new heaven and a new earth. Illustrated in colors, they seem not the hills we have known, but strangely unfamiliar in this shimmering radiance, this new witchery “from dreamland sent.” There was a time when I was rather skeptical of the existence of a “beauty that intoxicates,” but that was before coming to Oregon. I am a believer now, and already half inebriated through the charm of this latest revelation. For a long time I have been sitting on an old stump,—one of the decorative features of our woodland lawn,—looking over this wonderland and regretting the years lost in finding it.