The changing seasons march over the hills in a glorious pageant of color, from the tender veiling green of young April to the purple mists and red-and-gold splendor of Indian summer. Every day had the thrill of new adventure to Mary Lyon, but perhaps she loved the mellow October days best. "They have all the glowing memory of the past summer and the promise of the spring to come," she used to say. How could one who had, through the weeks of growing things, worked together with rain and sunshine and generous earth for the harvest but feel the happy possession of all the year at the time when she saw bins overflowing with brown potatoes, yellow corn, and other gifts of fields and orchard? She could never doubt that, given the waiting earth and faithful labor, the harvest was sure. Duties and difficulties were always opportunities for higher endeavor and happier achievement. There was no play in Mary Lyon's childhood except the play that a healthy, active child may find in varied, healthful work done with a light heart. There was joy in rising before the sun was up, to pick weeds in the dewy garden, to feed the patient creatures in the barn, and to make butter in the cool spring-house. Sometimes one could meet the sunrise on the hill-top, when it happened to be one's turn to bring wood to the dwindling pile by the kitchen door. Then there was the baking--golden-brown loaves of bread and tempting apple pies. When the morning mists had quite disappeared from the face of the hills, the blue smoke had ceased to rise from the chimney of the little farm-house. Then was the time to sit beside Mother and knit or weave, sew or mend, the garments that were homemade, beginning with the moment when the wool, sheared from their own sheep, was carded and spun into thread. For holidays, there were the exciting mornings when they made soap and candles, or the afternoons when they gathered together in the barn for a husking-bee. Beauty walked with Toil, however, about that farm in the hills. Mary had time to lift up her eyes to the glory of the changing sky and to tend the pinks and peonies that throve nowhere so happily as in her mother's old-fashioned garden. "May I plant this bush in the corner with your roses?" asked a neighbor one day. "It is a rare plant of rare virtue, and I know that in your garden it cannot die." As the labor of her hands prospered, as her garden posies blossomed, so the wings of Mary Lyon's spirit grew. No matter how shut in the present seemed, no hope nor dream for the future died in her heart as the days went by. Her plans only took deeper and deeper root as she worked and waited patiently for the time of flowers and fruit. There were few books to be had, but these yielded her of their best. There was opportunity for but few scattered terms in distant district schools, but she learned there more than the teachers taught.