New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-10-15
OTTOEDOORS ~ OCTOBER.

Some poets i'll a bilious fit OF indigestion
once wrote down Autumn as the melancholy
DAYS, dubbed it "a tired old man who sits
I" down a-wearyn or insisted that its healthy
flush and beauty were a hectic glow-the
rose that blooms mid ruin on cOnsumpti0n's
cheek Surely we have echoed such long
enough. The year has just reached its full
ness of strength; the long work OF sun, rain,
and earth is accomplished on seed and root,
and they offer the triumphant harvest;
the air is electric with life, but there
is a royal calm in it that stills and quiets man
also Indeed, it is Il wholesome lesson for any
man Just now to turn his back awhile on shop
and Office and 20 out to the country. We
talk much of great gains or losses in this
stock or that; but what is any petty percent
age. or even the great income of trade COM
pared to this field of the cloth of gold which
Nature at Gods bidding spreads every
Autumn? What are the few thousand pounds
which the English Prince goes to scatter
among his disaifcctcd subjects to this royal
largesse of food and beauty to which no man
gives look or thought
We are so apt every day, over our ledger or
newspaper, to talk of our means of life as
coming from our own skill in machinery, or
head craft, or commerce, that we quite forget
the infinite wealth wrought out by slow drop
pings of rain, sunshine, chemical changes of
salts and alkalics in the earth We take IA a
matter of course the golden fields of grain
stretching from sea to sea, the cattle upon mil
lion hills the purple grapes, the orchards in quiet
places where peach and apple redden in the
sun, the mighty crops of minerals below and
al. bp
waters swarming with new young life-all
the miraculous gift, III word. which God
gives us year by year. The wonderful bounty
is evolved out of the ground before our eyes
by a process as inexpicable to the scientific
skeptic as to the dcvout believer; yet from long
custom we have ceased even to note it, much
less TO wonder at it. The man of culture and
wealth, who fingers in his country scat or
drives out of the city every afternoon, is scnSi-
bic of the purity of the air or enjoys fine
effect here and thcIc-the red haze above the
stubble fields at evening, the blaze of the
NAPLES against dull cedars, or the splendor of
the misty sunset. He has but little thought
perhaps of the King who in every waving
bough or golden beam holds out a gracious
scepter TO him.
Happily we do not need costly country seat
or cauipage TO go out and see Nature mt
work like one of the messengers whom God,
in Jobs days sent ont TO go To and fro in the
world The poorest man with the curtailed
hours of labor has time to go out to the park
or to the rivers at the cost of a walk or few
pennies. Even for the stroller along the streets
there are countless marvels of color on every
leaf that flutters to the pavement, or the pur-
pie beads of the wild-iyy covering the brick
walls. But the poets are all wrong; in town
or country the Autumn has no morbid bilious
melancholy in its grand repose.
There is another sentimental mistake COM
mon to literature and every day talk, which 1t
is time should be set right. 1t is that the
melancholy days come i'll the autumn of life.
that work and its reward, love, friendship,
good humor, even jOllity, all must fade out of
the midlle-aged mans horizon, and that the
rest of his days are most fifty spent in CON
tcmplatng the grave and the life beyond. So
far this is true that when the gray hairs begin
to come and the crows feet leave their prints
under the eyes, Il man of ordinary in
telligcnce usually has no great successes await
ing him i'll untried paths. He ought to know
whatever power is in him by this time and
how or where to Use it, though this is a mat
ter N which deiusiOn lasts late. One of our
sweetest poets believes that great violinist
was lost to the world in himself; the finest
American actor thinks his water-colofs his
true claim on Immortality; the favorite essay
ist of New England mOurns over his lost OPP
pOrtunitics with turning-lath and adze. Now,
if man has done nothing with a talent before
fifty, he had better make up his mind TO lay