Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/142

124 admiring the sassafras leaves. They were then just at the point of ripeness. Now they have turned to a dead brown. The maple's way is in better taste—to shed its leaves while they are still bright and fresh. They are under my feet now, a carpet of red and yellow.

One of the oddest bits of fall coloration (I cannot profess greatly to like it) is the ghostly white—greenish white—of Roxbury waxwork leaves. It is unique in these parts, so far as I can recall, but is almost identical with the pallor of striped maple foliage (Acer Pennsylvanicum) as one sees it in the White Mountains. Waxwork pigments all go to the berries, it appears. These are showy enough to suit the most barbaric taste, and are among the things that speak to me strongest of far-away times, when my childish feet were just beginning to wander in nature's garden. The sight of them reminds me of what a long time I have lived.

A gust of wind strikes a tall willow just as I approach it. See the leaves tumble! Thick and fast they come, a leafy shower, with none of those pretty, hesitating, para-