d fields can grow;
Seed of the Man-seed springing to stature and strength in my sun,
Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men, have won."

SHARLOT HALL,
in _Out West._

NOVEMBER 1.

One night when the plain was like a sea of liquid black, and the sky
blazed with stars, we rode by a sheep-herder's camp. The flicker of a
fire threw a glow out into the dark. A tall wagon, a group of
silhouetted men, three or four squatting dogs, were squarely within
the circle or illumination. And outside, in the penumbra of shifting
half light, now showing clearly, now fading into darkness, were the
sheep, indeterminate in bulk, melting away by mysterious thousands
into the mass of night. We passed them. They looked up, squinting
their eyes against the dazzle of the fire. The night closed about us
again.

STEWART EDWARD WHITE,
in _The Mountains._

NOVEMBER 2.

THE DROUTH: 1898.

No low of cattle from these silent fields
Fills, with soft sounds of peace, the evening air;
No fresh-mown hay its scented incense yields
From these sad meadows, stricken brown and bare.

The brook, that rippled on its summer way,
Shrinks out of sight within its sandy bed,
Defenseless of a covert from the ray,
Dazzling and pitiless, that beams o'erhead.

The rose has lost its bloom; the lily dies;
Our garden's perfumed treasures all are fled;
The bee no longer to their sweetness flies,
The humming-bird no longer dips his head.

The butterfly--that fairy-glancing thing--
Ethereal blossom of the light and air!
No longer poises on its fluttering wing;
How could it hover in this bleak despair?

FRANCES M. MILNE,
in _For Today._

NOVEMBER 3.

During this first autumn rain, those of us who are so fortunate as to
live in the country are conscious of a strange odor pervading all the
air. It is as though Dame Nature were brewing a vast cup of herb tea,
mixing in the fragrant infusion all the plants dried and stored so
carefully during the summer. When the clouds vanish after this
baptismal shower, everything is charmingly fresh and pure, and we have
some of the rarest of days. Then the little seeds, harbored through
the long summer in earth's bosom, burst their coats and push up their
tender leaves, till on hillside and valley-floor appears a delicate
mist of green, which gradually confirms itself into a soft, rich
carpet--and all the world is verdure clad. Then we begin t