October 5.

Our last day in dear Chappaqua; we go down to the city to-morrow morning.  How dread is the thought of leaving the poetic quiet of our country home, to return to the confusion and excitement of city life; that city, too, that will be fraught with such sad memories for us during the last days of October and November.

How quickly it has gone, this long, sweet summer.  I cannot realize that near five months have passed since that bright May morning that we arrived here, and found dear Chappaqua in all her tender spring freshness.  Imperceptibly the days have flown; the delicate hues of leafy May have deepened and gone; the summer is over, and autumn with her glowing tints has stolen upon us.  Now in vain do we hunt for daisies to pull apart petal by petal with the old French rhyme that every schoolgirl knows,

  “Il m’aime un peu—­beaucoup,
  Passionement,—­pas du tout!”

The daisies have gone with the sweet double violets and roses, and the fragrant heliotrope and mignonette, of which we used to make bouquets to dress the table and adorn the rooms; whilst brilliant, scentless flowers now fill our garden beds, and the maples with their aureolas of flame color and molten cold tell the same sad story—­summer has fled.

For the last time I have walked up to the pine grove, and have taken leave of that spot where dear uncle’s feet have so often trodden, and said farewell, too, to the forest trees whose trunks still bear the impress of the axe once wielded by that hand now forever at rest; I have drunk once more from the spring that Aunt Mary so dearly loved, and which is far sweeter to me than the vaunted waters of Trevi, and entered for the last time her loved home in the woods over whose threshold her weary feet will never pass again.

  “Tempo passato, perche non ritorni a me?”

Adieu to Chappaqua and to my journal.  My daintily bound volume, so large that I feared not easily to fill its pages, is closely covered, and only a few blank lines remain whereon to take leave of it forever.  Adieus are always saddening, and I close it with the words unspoken.

And for dear, dear Chappaqua, I can find no words more fitting to express my love than those verses written, it is true, in honor of another Westchester Home, but so appropriate that I will insert them here, trusting their author, Mr. JOHN SAVAGE, will pardon me for so doing.

OUR DEAR WESTCHESTER HOME.

  Where’er my hopeful fancy dares,
    Or toiling footstep falls—­
  Through ancient cities’ thoroughfares
    Or Fortune’s festal halls;
  O’er mountains grand, through forests deep,
  Or crest the yielding foam,
        I find no spot
        Like that dear cot,
  My own Westchester Home!

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