_Oct. 4_.--Cloudy and coolish; signs of incipient winter. Yet pleasant
here, the leaves thick-falling, the ground brown with them already;
rich coloring, yellows of all hues, pale and dark-green, shades from
lightest to richest red--all set in and toned down by the prevailing
brown of the earth and gray of the sky. So, winter is coming; and I
yet in my sickness. I sit here amid all these fair sights and vital
influences, and abandon myself to that thought, with its wandering
trains of speculation.
Note:
[10] There is a tulip poplar within sight of Woodstown, which is
twenty feet around, three feet from the ground, four feet across about
eighteen feet up the trunk, which is broken off about three or four
feet higher up. On the south side an arm has shot out from which
rise two stems, each to about ninety-one or ninety-two feet from the
ground. Twenty-five (or more) years since the cavity in the butt was
large enough for, and nine men at one time, ate dinner therein. It is
supposed twelve to fifteen men could now, at one time, stand within
its trunk. The severe winds of 1877 and 1878 did not seem to damage
it, and the two stems send out yearly many blossoms, scenting the
air immediately about it with their sweet perfume. It is entirely
unprotected by other trees, on a hill.--_Woodstown, N. J., "Register,"
April 15, '79_.
THE SKY--DAYS AND NIGHTS--HAPPINESS
_Oct. 20_.--A clear, crispy day--dry and breezy air, full of oxygen.
Out of the sane, silent, beauteous miracles that envelope and fuse
me--trees, water, grass, sunlight, and early frost--the one I am
looking at most to-day is the sky.
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