air, and in the influences that emanate upon us from the dumb forms of
nature. All the senses report a difference. The sun seems to have
burned out. One recalls the notion of Herodotus that he is grown
feeble, and retreats to the south because he can no longer face the
cold and the storms from the north. There is a growing potency about
his beams in spring, a waning splendor about them in fall. One is the
kindling fire, the other the subsiding flame.

It is rarely that an artist succeeds in painting unmistakably the
difference between sunrise and sunset; and it is equally a trial of his
skill to put upon canvas the difference between early spring and late
fall, say between April and November. It was long ago observed that the
shadows are more opaque in the morning than in the evening; the
struggle between the light and the darkness more marked, the gloom more
solid, the contrasts more sharp. The rays of the morning sun chisel out
and cut down the shadows in a way those of the setting sun do not. Then
the sunlight is whiter and newer in the morning,--not so yellow and
diffused. A difference akin to this is true of the two seasons I am
speaking of. The spring is the morning sunlight, clear and determined;
the autumn, the afternoon rays, pensive, lessening, golden.

Does not the human frame yield to and sympathize with the seasons? Are
there not more births in the spring and more deaths in the fall? In the
spring one vegetates; his thoughts turn to sap; another kind of
activity seizes him; he makes new wood which does not harden till past
midsummer. For my part, I find all literary work irksome from April to
August; my sympathies run in other channels; the grass grows where
meditation walked. As fall approaches, the currents mount to the head
again. But my thoughts do not ripen well till after there has been a
frost. The burrs will not open much before that. A man's thinking, I