Now your heart is driven home; and that cherished place, where so little while ago you wore your vanities with an air that mocked even your grief, and that subdued your better nature, seems to stretch toward you over long miles of distance its wings of love, and to welcome back to the sister’s and the father’s heart, not the self-sufficient and vaunting youth, but the brother and son—­the schoolboy Clarence.  Like a thirsty child, you stray in thought to that fountain of cheer, and live again—­your vanity crushed, your wild hope broken—­in the warm and natural affections of the boyish home.

Clouds weave the SUMMER into the season of AUTUMN; and
YOUTH rises from dashed hopes into the stature of a
MAN.

AUTUMN;

OR,

THE DREAMS OF MANHOOD.

DREAMS OF MANHOOD.

Autumn.

There are those who shudder at the approach of Autumn, and who feel a light grief stealing over their spirits, like an October haze, as the evening shadows slant sooner, and longer, over the face of an ending August day.

But is not Autumn the Manhood of the year?  Is it not the ripest of the seasons?  Do not proud flowers blossom,—­the golden-rod, the orchis, the dahlia, and the bloody cardinal of the swamp-lands?

The fruits too are golden, hanging heavy from the tasked trees.  The fields of maize show weeping spindles, and broad rustling leaves, and ears half glowing with the crowded corn; the September wind whistles over their thick-set ranks with whispers of plenty.  The staggering stalks of the buckwheat grow red with ripeness, and tip their tops with clustering tricornered kernels.

The cattle, loosed from the summer’s yoke, grow strong upon the meadows new-starting from the scythe.  The lambs of April, rounded into fulness of limb, and gaining day by day their woolly cloak, bite at the nodding clover-heads; or, with their noses to the ground, they stand in solemn, circular conclave under the pasture oaks, while the noon-sun beats with the lingering passion of July.

The Bob-o’-Lincolns have come back from their Southern rambles among the rice, all speckled with gray; and, singing no longer as they did in spring, they quietly feed upon the ripened reeds that straggle along the borders of the walls.  The larks, with their black and yellow breastplates, and lifted heads, stand tall upon the close-mown meadow, and at your first motion of approach spring up, and soar away, and light again, and with their lifted heads renew the watch.  The quails, in half-grown coveys, saunter hidden through the underbrush that skirts the wood, and only when you are close upon them, whir away, and drop scattered under the coverts of the forest.

The robins, long ago deserting the garden neighborhood, feed at eventide in flocks upon the bloody berries of the sumac; and the soft-eyed pigeons dispute possession of the feast.  The squirrels chatter at sunrise, and gnaw off the full-grown burrs of the chestnuts.  The lazy blackbirds skip after the loitering cow, watchful of the crickets that her slow steps start to danger.  The crows in companies caw aloft, and hang high over the carcass of some slaughtered sheep lying ragged upon the hills.