for the foliage seems to fall in fuller showers in such spots. The beech-trees are dotted with nuts. The wych-hazel has opened its husks, and the yellow flowers are dropping with the ripe nuts from the branches. Acorns and chestnuts are plentifully scattered beneath the trees which bore them. How much fruit of this sort, the natural fruit of the earth—nuts and berries—is wasted every year; or, rather, how bountiful is the supply provided for the living creatures who need such food!
Friday, 3d.—Very pleasant morning; the sun shining with a mild glow, and a warm air from the south playing over the fading valley. Long walk to a neighboring hamlet.
The farmers are busy with their later autumn tasks, closing the work of the present year; while, at the same time, they are already looking forward to another summer. There is something pleasing in these mingled labors beneath the waning sun of November. It is autumn grown old, and lingering in the field with a kindly smile, while they are making ready for the young spring to come. Here a farmer was patching up barns and sheds to shield his flocks and stores against the winter storms. There ploughmen were guiding their teams over a broad field, turning up the sod for fresh seed, while other laborers were putting up new fences about a meadow which must lie for months beneath the snow, ere the young grass will need to be protected in its growth. Several wagons passed us loaded with pumpkins, and apples, and potatoes, the last crops of the farm on the way from one granary to another. Thus the good man, in the late autumn of life, gathers cheerfully the gifts which Providence bestows for that day, despising no fruit of the season; however simple or homely, he re-
