The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-10-07
THE COUNTRY LANES IN AUTUMN.

Even the most hardened weather reviler was forced to smile in the presence of yesterday, a typical New Hampshire autumn day. There was absolutely no fault which could be found with it, unless, as pessimist remarked, it but lilly prepared us for any other kind of weather which might follow it. To one who enjoys all kinds of weather, it was a day to be enjoyed a little more than most others.
 It happened that l had business in a country town some fifteen miles from home, so. after an early break fast, I set out in a buggy, behind a big gray horse. My road lay along q mountain side, whence I had clear view to the westward, where the hori- zon was formed by the Green Moun- tains of Vermont. In the valley be- tween lay smiling farms, in all the glory of harvest time, for the bright, warm sun shone upon fields of stacked oats, hillsides covered with corn in the. shock, and acres of golden squash es and pumpkins, which adorned the brown earth exposed by the reaping of the corn. Some of the fields had been devoted to homelier crops and many men and boys were busy throwing out Well-grown potatoes. putting them into strong bags or loading them into carts. At the farm houses along the road. all the barn doors were open, suggesting a welcome for the newly h q 1a. ha. issued the buzz of machinery, and as I jumped out of the buggy to get bet ter look, I saw a thrashing machine at work, operated by a sputtering thump- ing. pumping little engine, mounted on four wagon wheels, just outside the door. The interior of the barn was so full of dust that I could barely make out the forms of several men working rapidly around the machine. Two of them were busy throwing into it hand fulls of newly cut oats, and two more were about as busy emptying and re- placing the peck measures which caught the oats as they poured out of the machine after being thrashed. This was one of the portable thrashing ma- chimes which travel through the coun- try here, and whose owners for a req sonable fee do the thrashing for scores of farmers who do not raise crops large enough to pay them to own machines of their own.
 On most of the farms I passed there were thriving apple orchards and in some of them men and women we're gathering the apples. In others the work had already been done, and the fruit, in barrels, stood under the trees, awaiting removal to the house. Quite as beautiful as the cultivated apple trees, were the wild ones. scores of which were to be seen along the sides of the road. The fruit, as a rule, was small, but very abundant, land the effect of heavily laden trees was often most decorative. These ap- pies were of several colors, but chiefly light yellow, golden yellow and red, with here and there a tree of russets. Of red ones, the most beautiful were crab apples, which had, in addition to their wonderful color, a delicate bloom like that of a plum. These apples are useful as well as ornamental, for from
 
 jelly of which they are justly proud.
 But it was not the harvesting of the crops alone which told the traveller of the passing of the year; great num- bers of migrant birds were winging their way overhead or stopping to feed in the fields and hedge-rows Cedar ! Waxwings with their plaintive whistles, goldfinches swinging gaily through the air, and with their wing beats marking time to their merry, careless song, and myrtle warbers fitting from hedge to hedge, flashing brown and gold. Crows, in small f1ocks, Tapped slowly southward and from the woods. the noisy jays were shouting their harvest calls. Four- footed creatures, too, gave hints of the approaching winter. A red squirrel I saw, running along a stone wall car rying in his mouth butternut which , minute later he hid in a hole be- l meath the root of a tree. Several times my attention was attracted by the
 monotonous Chip, chip, chip" of a l chipmunk, and looking, I would always
 see him sitting on some stone or fence
 rail, his cheek pouches bulging with
 food which he had been gathering for
 his winter supply. Once I saw a 1 woodchuck in the field near the road
 sitting at the mouth of his burrow. He was indeed wise to sit so near it, for
 otherwise, had danger threatened, he
 would have had difficulty in reaching
 it quickly, for he was too fat to dc anything but go to sleep And this oi
 course he will do within the next few
 weeks, to wake up only when the first
 warm days of spring shall advise him
 of the prospect of green food. One 1 of these little animals was as fearlesi
 as gray rabbit which hopped out oi
 the bushes just in front of my horse
 and sat up in. the grass to take a look