The Prescott daily news., 1913-02-10
LAST GIRL COTTAGER
 RIOTS IN SENTIMENT

T am rioting in sentiment out here" wrote the last girl cottager at the Michigan resort "The woods and I have things all to ourselves now and we are having the time of our lives.
 They stand silent in the October sunshine. But 1t is silence of diff ferent quality from that of the sum merit is breathless, eager. That is strange, since what they are waiting for is desolation to them-the touch of frost, the sad whirl of the winds. There is a golden quality to the very air, the reflection of the yellow of the beeches, the Indian orange and red of the sassafras, the yellowing brown of the oaks darkening into splashes of rusty crimson and streaks of luminous bronze. There is nothing in the world so like bronze as certain of the oak leaves.
 Occasionally by some roadside, across some clearing, the eye falls on a great confagration running close to the ground. It is the dwarf sumach, which is a verltable living flame. The goldenrod Is all rusty and the wild asters have vanished. The ground is half covered by patterned carpet from the trees above. Slashing through this riot of tones Is something that glitters with an uncanny, rippling brilliance in the soft, steady rays of the sun-it is the inland lake, which was commonplace enough when just blue or gray in the summer. Now 1t is a sheet Of quicksilver pricked by diamond points.
 All through the woods is rustling and scurrying and chattering, for the squirrels are getting ready for winter and making great uproar about 1t. Max, the collie. passes his days in hysterical chases, covering the ground in the splendid, long leaps that only a collie can manage, but always the little red-brown squirrel flashes up tree just in the nick of time and barks staccato defiance in answer to the dogs yells of disgust and defeat be- low. Max has been known to dash wildly into the bungalow and drag any handy human being to the tree where some particularly eXasperating squirrel was safely ensconced and de- mand excitedly that his friend get the villain down and deliver him over for punishment. If you speak collie Eng fish you can readily understand Max.
 "The squirrels are tolerably tame. They will sit within armthrow of you on a branch and eat if you are quiet. Once l saw one chamber up hemlock with mushroom that must have weighed pound, and, sitting up on his launches, deliberately eat it to the last shred, winking defiance when I insisted that it was a toadstool. There was no dead squirrel under that tree next day, so be must have won the bet
 "The air is full of wings The blue jays and crows and wrens and black birds and woodpeckers are yet in evi- dence, though the robins are gone The crows sweep and cav, the black birds shrill and chatter and all the tree trunks resound to the woodpeck- CTS tapping search for insects. A couple of infinitesimal wrens hopping about through the leaves will make lot of noise. And all day long this feathered army is closing in on one.
 Where the sun is hottest on the yellow grass the crickets still chirp and the green katydids sing from bending stalks. The crickets creep into the bungalow on the logs for the .Srarlara ond hz of the room.
 Some morning, when it is particu. larly golden and still, on your throw ing open the doors the world will be filled with a tremendous chatter of birds-not of few, but apparently Of all the birds on earth, all talking at once. Rushing out, you find dog en trees inky with blackbirds, gather ing for their migration. For two or three days this din keeps up and oc- casionally the thousands will move up to another set of trees with a sweep through the air like waves Then of a sudden they are gone. You did not see them on their grand flight-nobody ever does catch them at it. They sim ply were and now are not, so far as you are concerned.
 Every day the leaves drop faster and the paths and walks are hidden under them. The ground is speckled with resinous pine cones and beech nuts and acorns. A sharper frost than usual pinches the last geraniums in your garden and at night the cold creeps up through the living-room and you edge toward the blazing fireplace