through the woods and fields, you find many of the smaller shrubs very prettily colored, little annuals also, and the seedlings of the forest-trees. The tiny maples especially, not longer than your finger, with half a dozen little leaflets, are often as delicately colored as blossoms, pink, and red, and yellow. Some of the flowering plants, also, the sarsaparillas and May-stars, with their finely-cut leaves, are frequently of a soft, clear straw-color. One may make very handsome bunches of these bright leaves; a branch of the golden chestnut, or aspen, or birch, a crimson twig from a young oak, another of scarlet maple, a long, plume-like leaf of the red sumach, with some of the lesser seedlings, and the prettiest of the wood-plants, make up a bouquet which almost rivals the dahlias in brilliancy.
Some persons occasionally complain that this period of the year, this brilliant change in the foliage, causes melancholy feelings, arousing sad and sorrowful ideas, like the flush on the hectic cheek. But surely its more natural meaning is of a very different import. Here is no sudden blight of youth and beauty, no sweet hopes of life are blasted, no generous aim at usefulness and advancing virtue is cut short; the year is drawing to its natural term, the seasons have run their usual course, all their blessings have been enjoyed, all our precious things are cared for; there is nothing of untimeliness, nothing of disappointment in these shorter days and lessening heats of autumn. As well may we mourn over the gorgeous coloring of the clouds, which collect to pay homage to the setting sun, because they proclaim the close of day; as well may we lament the brilliancy of the evening star, and the silvery brightness of the crescent moon, just ascending into the
