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"THE PATH HAS BEEN CARPETED BY THE STORM

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"Overhead the tops of the maples sway in the wind and on either side is the dense green of the rhododendrons."

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Autumn Walks and Reveries

By Frank W. Harold

III. The Spring of Magical Water

HERE is a spring in the mountains,

not far from the haunts of men, the water of which is full of magic. The day after the great storm I walked to see it. A man who had been bewitched by its magic led me, and I, drinking, also came under its spell, which is, that anyone drinking from the spring shall ever keep fadeless in his memory the delight of the walk and the wonder of the water. The rain had ceased, but a strong wind came out of the Northeast, sweeping across the high plateau and down the side of the mountain. There is usually little that is enjoyable about a Northeast wind, but it was exhilarating that day. The air was cool, but so fresh, so full of something uplifting, that involuntarily the breathing became deep and long. There was a definite flavor in the breeze and only a little imagination was needed to detect the taste of newly created air, which the storm had purified; first by driving rain through it and thus washing out every deleterious element, and then letting it blow across unnumbered miles of strong oak and pine trees, with whose odor and strength it became thoroughly saturated.

From the road the path turns into a field and slopes downward, with a pasture on the right and a cornfield on the left. The cornfield has been assailed by the tempest until every blade has been whipped to tatters and rags by the wind. Down a steep little hill the path goes, into the woods, full of moist Autumn scents. Chestnut burrs, open and empty, are scattered all about. Squirrels have been here and empty shells and crumbs of their feast indicate that they have dined well.

A few steps down the rocky path and a pheasant breaks cover with a whirr of unseen wings; another step and a rabbit hops carefully away. Gullied by the storm, the path has been swept bare to the rocks. A tiny stream makes use of it as a channel,

and stones must be carefully selected to step upon, so heads are bowed; until unexpectedly the spring is discovered nestling below, the dark pool reflecting the colors of the waving branches of hemlocks and maples meeting overhead.

How cool is the air, how wonderfully. clear the water as it glides away in a narrow channel. A glass is filled where the water flows smooth over a rock at the outlet of the pool. Brimful and dropping crystal, it is raised. Clear as the purest diamond the water is, and as sparkling. To the lips it is as cool as if from a glacier's heart; its exquisite flavor suggests a hundred things which belong to the woods and mountains. In a rapture of fancy the glass is drained; another is dipped and drank, and the spell of the spring is cast. What has nature put into it? What magic of the storm is here? Never was thirst so perfectly satisfied. Never was water so pure, so limpid. For a moment every care is forgotten in the thrill of a thousand crowding memories.

Now the murmur of running water is heard, and the tossing of foamy waves through the trees marks the course of a mountain brook. Swiftly the thoughts fly back thirty years, to another brook, a waterfall, little rapids, a field and a wood. Two brothers sail their boats in the stream, following on the bank. Ah, how sweet is the memory of those days. But, under the sod of a cemetery in a distant. city, the absent one sleeps, called away in his young manhood. Arousing from this tender reverie of boyhood, in a few steps we are beside the stream.

How beautifully the path has been carpeted by the storm. No one has passed this way since the rain ceased falling, and we are the first to tread the newly laid carpet of leaves. The ground color is yetlow, in all tones and tints, and the hues are bright and new, contributed principally

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"CLOSE BESIDE IS THE RESTLESS STREAM. "Rushing forward, darting into little pools, now swift, now slow, tumbling over falls, turning into foam in a cascade; * * *flowing down rapids; ** every murmur and whisper, each tinkle and swish, bursting bubbles, hissing foam, all b'ending to make the tireless motion and delightful music poets have sung."

by the chestnuts. The design is picked out in crimson and scarlet from the maples, with shadings of russet brown or the deep green and purple of the oaks. Overhead the tops of the maples sway in the wind, and on either side is the dense green of the rhododendrons. The carpet is soft and noiseless beneath the feet.

Close beside is the restless stream. Rushing forward, darting into little pools where it lays quiet and clear, now swift, now slow, tumbling over falls, turning into foam in a cascade over the rocks, flowing down rapids in a succession of little waves or ripples, every murmur and whisper, each tinkle and swish, bursting bubbles,

hissing foam-all blending to make the tireless motion and delightful music poets have sung, the brook hurries on its way. It is fascinating to walk beside it. A stick sails down the stream as our boats did years ago. It dives over a fall, swirls in the pool below, floats slowly out and becomes entangled in an overhanging bush. Loosed from its moorings, the boat dances away out of sight around a bend.

A place where the stream has broken away from its channel, is crossed on stepping stones. Now we walk a log across

the brook and following a tributary rill a few feet, find its source in a deep, shadowy spring under the roots of a big hemlock. At last there is a glimpse of a lake, and then turning, over the deep carpet of leaves we go back to the spring. Another drink of the sparkling water more tightly binds the magic of its spell. Then we climb the path to the field, and, looking carefully along the stone wall at the border of the woods for the chipmunk who feasted on the chestnuts, reluctantly emerge into the road once more.

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MILE walk through the darkness to the observatory on the Knob, up hill all the way; a climb up trembling ladders, and then, high above the whispering trees, between earth and sky, for objects below could not be distinguished, to sit and drink in the silence and wonder of the star-sprinkled dome.

The impression this solitary half-hour gave of the beauty of night and of the vastness of an unknown universe, made the soul beat time with the chorus of worlds whose signal lamps burned in the sky above.

The atmosphere had been swept of every cloud, and not even a fleck of mist obscured the view of the heavens. Only enough air was moving to make the trees nearby send up a light whisper out of the soft darkness; followed by a deeper note from the rustling foliage down the side of the mountain. A bird twittered in its sleep. At the base of the tower a cricket cheeped low. A night bird sounded a soft call to its mate. All these sounds emphasized the peaceful calm that was a part of the enveloping blue-black dark

ness.

Wonderfully clear and distinct the myriad stars appeared. South of the zenith a planet blazed. Like a broad band overhead stretched the milky-way with familiar constellations on each side. Almost in the centre was Casseopia's chair. Nearby gleamed Andromeda and the stars of Perseus. Just above the Northern

horizon lay the big dipper, and in the East Aldebaran was rising, with the stars in the belt of Orion twinkling near. A faint streak which lasted but an instant, showed where a meteor's career had been burned to dust. There was no moon to dim the light of the lesser stars and everywhere around the brighter ones they crowded, leaving no spot of this rare Autumn sky without its sparkling points of light.

Out of a dusty corner of memory came a thought which youthful fancy had conceived; that the stars were tiny holes in heaven, used by the angels to peep through to see if people were good or bad, and the light of the stars was the glory of the great white throne shining through the peep-holes.

Off to the North and West, the horizon line of the mountain plateau was defined against the portion of the sky in which there still lingered faintly the light of day. Across the broad valley to the South and East, earth and sky were blended in the deep shadow of the night and the boundary ridges of the mountains were lost.

To senses steeped in the quiet of this brooding scene, came like a shock the realization that in the North, close to the summit of a dimly outlined mountain spur, a faint phosphorescent light was glowing in the sky. A long pale finger crept silently upwards towards the zenith. Then another and another, until, its weird beauty thrilling the heart, there flamed in the

Northern heavens the mysterious luminous arch of the magnetic pole, the first aurora borealis of the Autumn and Winter.

The fingers of fleeting light continually changed their position and form, but so mysteriously that the eye could not follow. They broadened and deepened, narrowed and glowed, faded until almost invisible, appeared again, died down into the evanescent cloud at the horizon, stretched upward once more, one ray going almost to the pole star, another piercing the cup of the dipper-hovering, shimmering, all keeping close to that source of magnetic

power, the point to which swings the quivering needle of the compass.

Too soon the beams of ghostly light paled. The cloud from which they ascended faded almost away. From absorption in the splendid display, thrown into the heavens, it seemed, almost for an audience of one, I roused to find that imperceptibly a chill breeze had arisen out of that part of the sky in which the northern lights had shone. Once more I drank in the scene, listened an instant to the breathing of the night and then descended to the ground and took the dark and deserted path back to the village.

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