Year: 1879

1t was most lovely evening II wanted
but about half an hour TO sundown, and all
was perfectly still. There was not the
slightest sound of anything moving in the
forest except that of the unfrequent flight
of a moose bird close by. And so l sat
watching that most glorious transformation
scene-the change of day into night; saw
the great sun sink slowly down behind the
pine trees; saw the few clouds that hovered
mOtionless above me blaze into the color of
bright FURNISHED gold saw the whole at
mosphere become glorious with soft yell
low light, gradually dying out as the night
crept on, till only in the western sky there
! fingered faint glow fading into pale,
cold apple-green, against which the pines
stood out as black as midnight and as
sharply defined as though cut out of steel.
AS the darkness deepened young crescent
moon shone out pale and clear, with gilt
| tering star little below the lower horn,
| and above her another star of lesser magni-
tude. 1t looked as though supernatural
| jewel-a heavenly pendant, two great dla-
mond solitaires and diamond crescent
were hanging in the western sky. After
while the moon, too, sank behind the trees,


and darkness fell upon the earth. | know
of nothing more enchanting than perfect
ly calm and silent autumnal sunset in the
woods unless 1t be the sunrise, which to my
mind is more lovely still. Sunset is beauti-
full, but sad; sunrise is equally beautiful,
and full Of life, happiness and hope. /
love to watch the stars begin to fade, to see
| the first faint white light clear up the dark
ness of the eastern sky, and gradually


deepen inte the glorious coloring that her
aids the approaching sun. l love to see
nature awake shuddering, as she always
does, and arouse herself into active, busy
| life, to note the insects, birds and beasts
shake off slumber and set about their daily
tasks. Still the sunset is inexpressibly
lovely, and | do not envy the condition and
| frame of mind of a man who cannot be as
nearly happy as man can be, when he is
lying comfortably on a luxurious and soft
couch, gazing in perfect peace on the glor-
ious scene around him, rejoicing all his
senses, and saturating himself with the
wonderful beauties of Northern sunset.


So sat quietly below, while the Indian
Gale d from the tree-top. Not sound an
swered to the three or four long -drawn-out
notes with which he hoped to lure the bull


after long interval he called again, but the
same perfect, utter silence reigned in the
woods, a silence broken only by the melan-
choly hooting of an owl, or the imaginary
noises that filled my head. 1T is extraor-
binary how small noises become magnified
when the ear is kept at a great tension for
any length of time, and how the head be-
comes filled with all kinds of fictitious
sounds; and it is very remarkable also how
utterly impossible it is to distinguish be-
tween loud noise uttered at distance and
a scarcely audible sound close by After
listening very intently amidst the profound
silence of quiet night in the forest for an
hour or so the head becomes so surcharged
with blood, owing, l presume, to all the
faculties being concentrated on single
sense, that one seems to hear distant voices,
the ringing of bells and all kinds of strange
and impossible noises A man becomes so
nervously alive to the slightest disturbance
of the almost awful silence of still night
in the woods that the faintest sound-the
cracking of minute twig or the fall of a