The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-10-25
A FALL SCENE IN THE WOODS.

Written for the Journal.
Sunday, in the morning, was an "Indian Sum
mer day, if one ever fell over the equinox on the
wintry side of the equator, and nobody ever saw
one on the other. A light haze filled the air-a
lazy haze, that the air couldn't raise energy
enough to move; and it hung about the trees,
and softened theirrich colors, and mixed with the
smoke and steam of distant engines, running
not running, that is too vigorous a word for the
fact, but strolling. so to ~speak-away out where
the woods first summon courage enough to dare
the sight of the city. The indication of a train
was a rumble, SO softened by distance and the
effect of the lazy haze as to sound like the
musical growing of the big fiddle in an
orchestra, and a thickening of the
hazy air where the clouds of smoke and
steam spread about SO far that one could
hardly guess where the engine was. All round
the horizon the woods were putting on their fall
clothes, the richest of the year, and. like
suicidal philosopher of Greece. they never put
them on till they are going to die. Some of the
sugars are so brightly and intensely yellow that
they would beggar the warmest colors of Cox's
palette, and he can match them if anybody can.
Some are tinged with a darker hue, a sort OF
golden bronze, and the elms and beeches are
following fast. Only the oak holds out; a sturdy
summer green, without a tint of the purple that
comes to him before winter gets here. The
walnut is bare, the buckeye and the sycamore
fast browning, and the "wahoo," or 'In-
diana arrow head" just kindling the
fire that blazes like a beacon through
all the region round when a sharp frost has
painted its foliage as red AS the sky over
Krakatoa. The woods are almost at their best
now. A day in an Indian summer haze, with
the trees more richly dressed than the bellies of
a ball; with light clouds floating by and hurry
.~~ h 1Ar-1 oD4~ $h4 @l ll@- "a
bronze foliage, over the meadow grass, still
green where the fallen leaves do not cover it,
over brown weeds in the swamp and the green
flags" that hedge them around; with the silence
rarely broken even by the chuckle of a black
bird or the call of a quail in the stubble, is a
rarer day than the poets day in June"
1t is a day for an idle man or a philosopher to
lie under a tree and watch the clouds, the chang
ing shadows and the shifting hues of the trees
and winds. and fill the time with day-dreams.
Schumann must have conceived his ''Traumerei'
or "Revery" in just such a situation. The
Journals ''idler' lay on a bank, yesterday, not
where the wild thyme grows but where the
rag-weed has grown and is now dropping it fifty
thousand seeds to spoil the milk of the next
years cow, and before him lay as pretty a fall
scene as any painter ever imagined or attempt
ed. 1t was the bluff bank of swamp, and the
tree that Swallowed him was an oak,
still in its summer garniture, though
dropping little acorns, as big as fairy tea-cups,
all over the sward and the road close by. Straight
down the swamp were little patches of the green
and yellow gorgeousness that, in the unprotect-
ed weather of July, We call green scum" glo-
riied by the half yelled sunlight into such splen-
dor as would fit them for the streets of the New
Jerusalem, and in among them and all about
them were variegated spots of brown iron weeds
and green flags and yellow swamp-grass. A
pavement OF such brilliance as no artist ever
equaled in any mosaic floor Of cathedral or pal
ace, with here and there, on a floating chunk,
a turtle, glistening as if his shell had been bur
nished. The steep bank. bordering this picture,
of natures of own painting, was a frame worthy
of it. Bushes covered it thickly everywhere, as
brightly colored as the woods that lay behind it,
and here and there q clump of elder bushes, as
green as June, was conspicuous in the brighter
glow, and a sugar tree rose away above, yellow
and reddening to crimson, while an occasional
bush shove its blonde foliage browning to
bronze. 1t was all a great, broad picture, framed
by the bank and the brown stubble, and such a
picture as nature alone paints and few ever see.
Probably those who do see them enjoy them all
the more for knowing that they have few TO
share the property, and, in some sense, it is their
own.