No Pen Can Describe The Turning Of The Leaves - The Insurrection Of The
Tree-People Against The Waning Year.
A little maple began it, flaming
blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a
pine-belt.
Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp
where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as far as the
eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold.
Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army;
and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull
and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf,
till nothing remained but pencil-shading of bare boughs, and one could
see into the most private heart of the woods.
Frost may be looked for till the middle of May and after the middle of
September, so Summer has little time for enamel-work or leaf-embroidery.
Her sisters bring the gifts - Spring, wind-flowers, Solomon's-Seal,
Dutchman's-breeches, Quaker-ladies, and trailing arbutus, that smells as
divinely as the true May. Autumn has golden-rod and all the tribe of
asters, pink, lilac, and creamy white, by the double armful. When these
go the curtain comes down, and whatever Powers shift the scenery behind,
work without noise. In tropic lands you can hear the play of growth and
decay at the back of the night-silences. Even in England the tides of
the winter air have a set and a purpose; but here they are dumb
altogether. The very last piece of bench-work this season was the
trailed end of a blackberry-vine, most daringly conventionalised in
hammered iron, flung down on the frosty grass an instant before people
came to look. The blue bloom of the furnace was still dying along the
central rib, and the side-sprays were cherry red, even as they had been
lifted from the charcoal. It was a detail, evidently, of some invisible
gate in the woods; but we never found that workman, though he had left
the mark of his cloven foot as plainly as any strayed deer. In a week
the heavy frosts with scythes and hammers had slashed and knocked down
all the road-side growth and the kindly bushes that veil the drop off
the unfenced track.
There the seasons stopped awhile. Autumn was gone, Winter was not. We
had Time dealt out to us - mere, clear, fresh Time - grace-days to enjoy.
The white wooden farm-houses were banked round two feet deep with dried
leaves or earth, and the choppers went out to get ready next year's
stores of wood. Now, chopping is an art, and the chopper in all respects
an artist. He makes his own axe-helve, and for each man there is but one
perfect piece of wood in all the world. This he never finds, but the
likest substitute is trimmed and balanced and poised to that ideal.
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