fruits wither and drop off, giving back to the soil the nourishment
they have drawn from it; the whole top being thus otherwise wasted--
that part of the hemp which every year the dreamy millions of the
Orient still consume in quantities beyond human computation, and
for the love of which the very history of this plant is lost in the
antiquity of India and Persia, its home--land of narcotics and
desires and dreams.

Then the rakers with enormous wooden rakes; they draw the stalks
into bundles, tying each with the hemp itself. Following the
binders, move the wagon-beds or slides, gathering the bundles and
carrying them to where, huge, flat, and round, the stacks begin to
rise. At last these are well built; the gates of the field are
closed or the bars put up; wagons and laborers are gone; the brown
fields stand deserted.

One day something is gone from earth and sky: Autumn has come,
season of scales and balances, when the Earth, brought to judgment
for its fruits, says, "I have done what I could--now let me rest!"

Fall!--and everywhere the sights and sounds of falling. In the
woods, through the cool silvery air, the leaves, so indispensable
once, so useless now. Bright day after bright day, dripping night
after dripping night, the never-ending filtering or gusty fall of
leaves. The fall of walnuts, dropping from bare boughs with muffled
boom into the deep grass. The fall of the hickory-nut, rattling
noisily down through the scaly limbs and scattering its hulls among
the stones of the brook below.

The fall of buckeyes, rolling like balls of mahogany into the