XVIII
Now that the “mellow Autumn days” have come, if you are longing for—
“Air and sunshine and blue sky,
The feeling of the breeze upon your face,
The feeling of the turf beneath your feet,
And no walls but the far-off mountain tops,”
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.
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