In a wood, a heap or pile of logs and sticks that had been cut for firewood, and piled up square, in order to be carted away to the house when convenience served, or rather to be sledded in sleighing-time.  But the moss had accumulated on them, and, leaves falling over them from year to year, and decaying, a kind of soil had quite covered them, although the softened outline of the woodpile was perceptible in the green mound.  It was perhaps fifty years, perhaps more, since the woodman had cut and piled these logs and sticks, intending them for his winter fire.  But he probably needs no fire now.  There was something strangely interesting in this simple circumstance.  Imagine the long-dead woodman, and his long-dead wife and family, and one old man who was a little child when the wood was cut, coming back from their graves, and trying to make a fire with this mossy fuel.

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September 19.—­Lying by the lake yesterday afternoon, with my eyes shut, while the breeze and sunshine were playing together on the water, the quick glimmer of the wavelets was perceptible through my closed eyelids.

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October 13.—­A cool day,—­the wind northwest, with a general prevalence of dull gray clouds over the sky, but with brief, sudden glimpses of sunshine.  The foliage having its autumn hues, Monument Mountain looks like a headless Sphinx, wrapt 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.

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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.

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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.

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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