in a rich Persian shawl.
Yesterday, through a diffused mist, with the sun shining on it, it had
the aspect of burnished copper. The sun-gleams on the hills are
peculiarly magnificent, just in these days.

* * * * *

_October 13._--One of the children, drawing a cow on the blackboard,
says, "I'll kick this leg out a little more,"--a very happy energy of
expression, completely identifying herself with the cow; or, perhaps, as
the cow's creator, conscious of full power over its movements.

* * * * *

_October 14._--The brilliancy of the foliage has past its acme; and,
indeed, it has not been so magnificent this season as usual, owing to
the gradual approaches of cool weather, and there having been slight
frosts instead of severe ones. There is still a shaggy richness on the
hillsides.

* * * * *

_October 16._--A morning mist, filling up the whole length and breadth
of the valley, between the house and Monument Mountain, the summit of
the mountain emerging. The mist reaches to perhaps a hundred yards of
me, so dense as to conceal everything, except that near its hither
boundary a few ruddy or yellow tree-tops rise up, glorified by the early
sunshine, as is likewise the whole mist-cloud. There is a glen between
our house and the lake, through which winds a little brook, with pools
and tiny waterfalls, over the great roots of trees. The glen is deep and
narrow, and filled with trees; so that, in the summer, it is all in dark
shadow. Now, the foliage of the trees being almost entirely of a golden
yellow, instead of being obscure, the glen is absolutely full of
sunshine, and its depths are more brilliant than the open plain or the
mountain-tops. The trees are sunshine, and, many of the golden leaves
having freshly fallen, the glen is strewn with light, amid which winds
and gurgles the bright, dark little brook.

* * * * *

_October 28._--On a walk yesterday forenoon, my wife and children
gathered Houstonias. Before night there was snow, mingled with rain. The
trees are now generally bare.

* * * * *

_December 1._--I saw a dandelion in bloom near the lake, in a pasture by
the brookside. At night, dreamed of seeing Pike.

* * * * *

_December 19._--If the world were crumbled to the finest dust, and
scattered through the universe,