That summer is drawing to its end, and autumn close at hand, one need not look at the calendar to know. Throughout a morning’s walk, signs of imminent change crop up now at every turn. The wild arums that you have forgotten since last you saw them turning their pale green cowls from the light, give out a bold glitter of scarlet in the shady deeps under every hedgerow. Each day sees the hips and haws growing ruddier. Though September is scarce half gone, the green bracken-fronds in the woods are already alight at the tips with crimson and gold; and the heather on the combe-side has lost its clear rose-red. The song of the bees in it seems as loud as ever, but for every tuft of living blossom there are two that are faded and brown. The good times are nearly over for the honey-makers, and each day the gathering of a full load of nectar means travelling farther afield. I wonder why it is I always look forward to the renewal of the year’s life with so much eagerness and impatience, and yet meet its decline with such surpassing equanimity. Am I—I have often asked myself lately—the same being who industriously searched the river bank for a whole bleak February morning in quest of the first coltsfoot, greeting it with an unconscionable extravagance of rejoicing: I who now tread the same way in nowise perturbed, nor even unelated, at the obvious fact of each day’s lessened ardour? The truth that the year is already on the long downward road, riding for its winter fall, awakens in me not a pang of regret. Indeed, I neither remember the departed magnificence of June as something lost, nor regard the ever-diminishing September days as portent of penurious times to come. With autumn, as with advancing age, when once each is assured, irrevocable, the natural tendency seems to be towards a looking neither backward nor forward, but towards a joyful acceptance of the things that are. And so, at these times, whatever our declared principles, we one and all develop, or degenerate, into optimists. But, of a truth, it needs very little of this mental condiment to be happy in a Sussex Downland village in September. Perhaps none but the very old can, at any time, sincerely avow a repugnance towards machinery in farming: certainly, at this season of the year, the whole spirit of village life receives benefit from it. They have been threshing up at the farm to-day, and from sunrise to sunset, all through the still, quiet, golden hours, the voice of the threshing mill has permeated everything, blent itself with the song of the robins in the garden, with the chime from the smithy, with all the other sounds of labour that go to make up the silence of country dwelling-places. I have come to look upon this sound as the veritable keynote of autumn, and to believe that it has an influence on all hearts at this season, entirely underrated by those whose business it is to study rural affairs.