Turn the eye southward, from the town, with its noise, bustle and smoke, and look with me over my daily horizon, which indeed bounds a landscape which my eyes have feasted upon all my days, for the past half-century, save and except the years at college and years of foreign travel. Manifestly at the first, the very first, in fact, the eye catches the more conspicuous objects. And it is, in this instance, a great dead but standing hemlock tree, denuded, it is true, of its foliage, but yet bearing its limbs quite in detail. Like great men, it has died at the top, and its impression upon my retina is always associated with the crows’ congress which I saw in its foliage-less branches last fall. The crow, you know, only partially leaves us hereabout for the winter. Many of them do migrate, it is true, but here along the Lake Ontario shore dead fish are always thrown up by the waves, and he can feed at any time; consequently, he does not leave us. So, upon this elevated, dead tree-top, I saw thousands of them gather, and heard one after another deliver his speech in regular order. Oratory they must have, for their voices were plaintive, defiant and grave, in turn, and I dare not deny them intelligent utterance. Close beside this site of the crows’ congress are a few great, large, sweeping elms, whose branches alone would each make very respectable trees. Always their greenness is visible to me, and the quiet contentment of pose of their branches and leaves is always a pleasure. Great blue-crested herons find convenient resting-places on their highest limbs. Stork-like, these great, gaunt birds stand upon one foot, and turn their heads side-wise, and so wise-like, that one feels so near nature when beholding them that it is uncanny to disturb them. I let the eye wander beyond the high elm limbs, and Ontario’s ultra-marine blue waters are before me, upon the far horizon, beyond my extreme range of vision. And when Old Sol rose this morning from out of Ontario’s waters, he heralded his appearance by throwing up into the sky shafts of light of various colors. Some, indeed, were pure violet for a few moments, and others red, and yellow, and blue, but not the blue of Ontario, so that the contrast may be marked for us. He is coming up swiftly, and in a few moments the colors have all changed, and almost before I can turn my head yellow has suffused the whole in the immediate locality of old submerged Sol. Again, the top of a wheel of fire we see upon the water, and now it is all red about. Old Sol has risen, and a globe of fire is sailing upon the waters’ surface. Could any facile brush only put upon canvas for us these phantasmagorial colors, no one would believe the artist, but accuse him of outdoing nature. And now he shines between me and a high hill upon the lake’s bank, surmounted by trees, green at the top and golden yellow along its sides with ripening grain. Our-red men discovered the very striking beauty of this eminence before Cartier ever