Side-Lights of Nature in Quill and Crayon (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 Excerpt: ...with a quaint sad modulation in it as if it were a requiem over summer days dead and gone. This golden November glow does not deceive him as it does the missel-thrush pouring forth his song-cascade far away in the dead oak spray in the wood. Any warm sun-steeped morning in the year will make the grey-speckled thrush light-hearted, or draw from the lusty blackbird a measure of his summer piping. But the little brown robin sits amid the crimson hawthorn berries, and sees afar off the ice and snow; and his small heart tells him that, for all the flood of golden sunlight, jack Frost will have his reign, and that the time is still far distant when the pink anemone will bloom under the hazels in the wood, or the gold-starred coltsfoot whiten in the breeze of the young spring day. ' But yestereven the-fierce north-west wind had died away in a tumbled sea of fiery crimson, and dense jagged drift of sulphurous blue. For days and days it had torn and shaken the great elm trees until it had stripped from them the last vestige of their autumn foliage, and now in the calm, sunny November morning the leaves lie in a deep moist carpet of shimmering cloth-of-gold. Nothing but the oaks have been able to stand against the fury of the blast; and these still bear their leaf-mantle bravely aloft, and can be seen in the bright sun stretching away in dim yellow undulations until all colour is merged and lost in the far distance of glimmering grey. In the long grass by the laneside the dew hangs in great clusters of diamonds, which as we move change to rubies and emeralds and sapphires in the misty morning light. On either side lie the meadows white with the clinging drops glistening like newly-fallen snow; and the spider-draperies swing trembling in the hedgerow, tier upon tier o...