The bright days of summer were a short-lived joy at Poganuc. One hardly had time to say “How beautiful!” before it was past. By September came the frosty nights that turned the hills into rainbow colors, and ushered in Autumn, with her gorgeous robes of golden-rod and purple asters. There was still the best of sport for the children, however; for the frost ripened the shagbark walnuts and opened the chestnut burrs, and the glossy brown chestnuts dropped down among the rustling yellow leaves and the beds of fringed blue gentian.... Here and there groups of pines and tall hemlocks, with their heavy background of solemn green, threw out the flamboyant tracery of the forest in startling distinctness. Here and there, as they passed a bit of low land, the swamp maple seemed really to burn like crimson flame, and the clumps of black alder, with their vivid scarlet berries, exalted the effect of color to the very highest and most daring result. No artist ever has ventured to put on canvas the exact copy of the picture that Nature paints for us every year in the autumn months. There are things the Almighty Artist can do that no earthly imitator can more than hopelessly admire. * * * * * [Sidenote: Bird-talk.] Who shall interpret what is meant by the sweet jargon of robin and oriole and bobolink, with their endless reiterations? Something wiser, perhaps, than we dream of in our lower life here. LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW. [Sidenote: New England winter.] By and by the sun took to getting up later and later, setting a dreadfully bad example, it is to be confessed. It would be seven o’clock and after before he would show his red face above the bed-clothes of clouds away off in the southeast; and when he _did_ manage to get up, he was so far off and so chilly in his demeanor that people seemed scarcely a bit the better for him; and by half-past four in the afternoon he was down in bed again, tucked up for the night, never caring what became of the world. And so the clouds were full of snow, as if a thousand white feather-beds had been ripped up over the world; and all the frisky winds came out of their dens, and great frolics they had, blowing and roaring and careering in the clouds,—now bellowing down between the mountains, as if they meant to tear the world to pieces, then piping high and shrill, first round one corner of the farmhouse, and then round the other, rattling the windows, bouncing against the doors, and then with one united chorus rumbling, tumbling down the great chimney, as if they had a mind to upset it. Oh, what a frisky, rough, jolly, unmannerly set of winds they were! By and by the snow drifted higher than the fences, and nothing was to be seen around the farmhouse but smooth, waving hills and hollows of snow; and then came the rain and sleet, and froze them over with a slippery, shining crust, that looked as if the earth was dressed for the winter in a silver coat of mail. QUEER LITTLE PEOPLE.