Trees! Think of them! In the United States thirty-six varieties of oak, thirty-four of pine, nine of fir, five of spruce, four of hemlock, two of persimmon, twelve of ash, eighteen of willow, nine of poplar, and I don't know how many of the beautiful beech. I once counted over thirty different varieties of trees in the space of one acre. And the leaves--their number, their individuality, their variety of shape and tint, the acres of space that those of one great tree would cover if spread out and laid together! In the autumn to watch them fall--how slowly, how rapidly! Yet they say nobody ever saw one of them let go. Homer's comparison to the lives of men--how fine! Better than Lucian's to the bubbles. I remember very well one October day in Ohio. It was long ago--"in life's morning march, when my bosom was young." (I like to quote from that poem of Campbell's, it is incomparable of its kind.) A delightful tramp! Elderberries. (The great Boerhaave held the elder in such pleasant reverence for the multitude of its virtues, that he is said to have taken off his hat whenever he passed it.) Grapes. Haws. Pawpaws. (Nature's custard.) Spicewood. Sassafras. Hickory nuts. Nearly a primeval forest. Vines reminding one of Brazilian creepers. Trees that were respectable saplings when Columbus landed. The dead roots of an iron-wood--so like a monster as to startle. Behemoth I thought of. "He moveth his tail like a cedar.' Thistle-down. Diffused like small vices. Every seed hath wings. Here and there a jay, or a woodpecker. Grape-vines, fantastically running over the tops of tall bushes, grouping deformities, any one of which, if an artist drew it, would be called an exaggeration, worse than anything of Doré's. Trees, swaying and bowing to one another, like stilted clowns in Nature's afterpiece of the seasons. Trees incorporated, sycamore and elm, maple and hickory, modifying and partaking each other's nature; resembling so much as to appear one tree. A jolly gray squirrel, hopping from limb to limb, like a robin; swinging like an oriole; flying along the limb like a weaver's shuttle; scared away, at length, by a scudding cloud of pigeons, just brushing the tallest tree-tops, as if kissing an annual farewell. Clover. Sorrel. Pennyroyal. A drink of cider from a bit of broken crockery. ("Does he not drink more sweetly that takes his beverage in an earthen vessel than he that looks and searches into his golden chalices for fear of poison, and sleeps in armor, and trusts nobody, and does not trust God for his safety?") "All is fair--all is glad--from grass to sun!" Not a "melancholy" day. Keats' poem on Autumn comes to mind; and Crabbe's "Welcome pure thoughts, welcome, ye silent groves; These guests, these courts, my soul most dearly loves."