Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1869-11-07

This glorious and gorgeous, though sum-
bre and melancholy season, the twilight
of the year, when the smoke from the
burned-out summer wraps up the hills and
hangs in evolving folds over the valleys
the dim curtain that autumn unrolls to
hide The frowning face Of winter, and drops
as a mourning veil for the dead blossoms, is
upon us. What singular season 1t is!
What wonderful mysteries, hidden away
in the casket of nature, terminating, bud
ding, blooming and ripening through all
the balance of the year round, burst forth
in fruition, or wither away and die during
its prevalence. The deep smoke-folds that
hang over the world now are the bridal
hangings Of nature, preceding the fruitful
progeney of another year. 1t is the funer-
al and the matrimonial month of the sea-
sons, the dead leaf falling and the ripe seed
counting and finding warmth under the
brown cover they spread, to sprlng again
into life producing other leaves for another
Indian summer. Its annual recurrence Is
season fit for tears and fit for joys and fit
for prayers as well. All nature rests now.
Everything is quiet, calm and serene
except scheming, blood-veined rest
less man. Nature has done all her
work and done it well, and man bends all
his energies to gather the results. This
is we'll For man, there is no Indian Sum
mer. In their rounds the seasons come
and 60" on and on forever. But when
man falls he falls forever, save the immor-
tai soul that lives in another realm.
Lovely as may be the season in its soft
pensiveness, what field of death IS cano-
pied by these blue clouds of smoke. The
sun rises bigger and redder and rounder,
from his crimson couch in the east, and
looks lazily down through filmy haze, in
stead of bursting from the horizon as in
the JOYOUS season, when dew-drops
sparkle on the grass, as 'Jocund day stands
tip-toe on the misty mountain top. He
looks with seeming reluctance upon the
ruin the seasons have wrought The year
| is diving and he seems to come as veIled
mourner, weeping and sorrowful from be
hind the distant hills, saddened to see all
the devices and frosted flowers below him.
Yet as he mounts higher into the heavens,
he shines with brighter glow upon the ami
nation beneath. The rich brown nuts fall
from the trees, bursting their ivory-lined
shells, the pendent cradles in which they
have been fructifed by his beams. Earth
groans with fruit and grain, ''till the land
runs Ger" warmed into life and
matured by his genial smiles, and all its
teeming population is gathering them
into the garner. He goes down away In
the west in golden glory, leaving saffron
tints upon the mountains of smoke and
the numerous cloudlets they do not OBJ
scure, through the long and lingering
twilight of these ''Tyrean-dyed" evenings.
Indian Summer! It is not only suggestive
of the placidity of the passing season, and
the calm serenity marking the face OF ma,
ture yelled in mourning, as it were, over the
dying year, but it reminds US OF the
boundary line between Age and Eternity
upon which all are verging.
Remembering this midway station Il
our hfe-j journeys, let US pass it well anc
glide calmly and peacefully as Indian Sum
mer into the mysterious future, approach
ing our graves like one who wraps the
drapery of his couch about him and lie
do wn to pleasant dreams"