When That Was
Done, A White Cloud Shaped Like A Dumb-Bell Whirled Down The Valley
Across The Evening Blue, Roaring And Twisting And Twisting And Roaring
All Alone By Itself.
A West Indian hurricane could not have been quicker
on its feet than our little cyclone, and when the
House rose a-tiptoe,
like a cockerel in act to crow, and a sixty-foot elm went by the board,
and that which had been a dusty road became a roaring torrent all in
three minutes, we felt that the New England summer had creole blood in
her veins. She went away, red-faced and angry to the last, slamming all
the doors of the hills behind her, and Autumn, who is a lady, took
charge.
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.
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