e crept further and further under
banks; some ran merry races over the mounds, and some danced up and
down in the hollows. As for the trees themselves, they were cowering
and shivering at a tremendous rate, apparently from want of the cloaks
of which every blast was thus stripping them.

A day or two after came the veritable soft-looking, sweet-breathing
Indian-Summer--"our thunder." No other clime has it. Autumn expires in
a rain-storm of three months in Italy; and it is choked to death with
a wet fog in England; but in this new world of ours, "our own green
forest land," as Halleck beautifully says, it swoons away often in a
delicious trance, during which the sky is filled with sleep, and the
earth hushes itself into the most peaceful and placid repose. There it
lies basking away until with one growl old Winter springs upon Nature,
locks her in icy fetters, and covers her bosom with a white mantle
that generally stays there until Spring comes with her soft eye and
blue-bird voice to make us all glad again.

Well, this beautiful season arrived as aforesaid, and a day "turned
up" that seemed to be extracted from the very core of the season's
sweetness. The landscape was plunged into a thick mist at sunrise, but
that gradually dwindled away until naught remained but a delicate
dreamy film of tremulous purple, that seemed every instant as if it
would melt from the near prospect. Further off, however, the film
deepened into rich smoke, and at the base of the horizon it was
decided mist, bearing a tinge, however, borrowed from the wood-violet.
The mountains could be discerned, and that was all, and they only by
reason of a faint jagged line struggling through the veil proclaiming
their summits. The dome above was a tender mixture of blue and silver;
and as for the sunshine, it was tempered and shaded down into a tint
like the blush in the tinted hollow of the sea-shell.

It was the very day for a ramble in the woods; so Benning, Watson, and
I, called at the dwelling of three charming sisters, to ask their
mamma's consent (and their own) to accompany us. These three Graces
all differed from each other in their styles of beauty. The eyes of
one were of sparkling ebony, those of the other looked as if the
"summer heaven's delicious blue" had stained them, whilst the third's
seemed as though they had caught their hue from the glittering gray
that is sometimes seen just above the gold of a cloudless sunset.

We turned down t