just as we look twice ere we make sure of our acquaintance in the streets, when they vary their [garbled].
The very last flowers are withering. The beautiful fern of the summer lies in rusty patches on the open hill-side, though within the woods it is still fresh and green. We found only here and there a solitary aster, its head drooping, and discolored, showing but little of the grace of a flower. Even the hardy little balls of the everlasting, or moonshine, as the country people call it, are getting blighted and shapeless, while the haws on the thorn-bushes, the hips of the wild rose and sweet-briar, are already shrunken and faded. It is singular, but the native flowers seem to wither earlier than those of the garden, many of which belong to warmer climates. It is not uncommon to find German asters, flos adonis, heart's-ease, and a few sprigs of the monthly honeysuckle, here and there, in the garden even later than this; some seasons we have gathered quite a pretty bunch of these flowers in the first week of December. At that time nothing like a blossom is to be found in the forest.
There once stood a singular tree in the wood through which we were passing. Wonders are told of its growth, for it is now some years since it disappeared, and its existence is becoming a tradition of the valley. Some lovers of the marvellous have declared that upon the trunk of a hemlock rose the head of a pine; while others assert that it was two trees, whose trunks were so closely joined from the roots that there appeared but one stem, although the two different tops were distinctly divided; others, again, living near, tell us that it was only a whimsical hemlock. In short, there are already as many different variations in the story as are needed to make up a marvellous tale, while all agree at
