Autumn is here and it is already late. He has painted the hedges
russet and gold, scarlet and black, and a tangle of grey; now he
has damp brown leaves in his hair and frost in his finger-tips.

It is a season of contrasts; at first all is stir and bustle, the
ingathering of man and beast; barn and rickyard stand filled with
golden treasure; at the farm the sound of threshing; in wood and
copse the squirrels busied 'twixt tree and storehouse, while the
ripe nuts fall with thud of thunder rain. When the harvesting is
over, the fruit gathered, the last rick thatched, there comes a
pause. Earth strips off her bright colours and shows a bare and
furrowed face; the dead leaves fall gently and sadly through the
calm, sweet air; grey mists drape the fields and hedges. The
migratory birds have left, save a few late swallows; and as I sit
at work in the soft, still rain, I can hear the blackbird's
melancholy trill and the thin pipe of the redbreast's winter song--
the air is full of the sound of farewell.

Forethought and preparation for the Future which shall be;
farewell, because of the Future which may never be--for us; "Man,
thou hast goods laid up for many years, and it is well; but,
remember, this night THY soul may be required"; is the unvoiced
lesson of autumn. There is growing up among us a great fear; it
stares at us white, wide-eyed, from the faces of men and women
alike--the fear of pain, mental and bodily pain. For the last
twenty years we have waged war with suffering--a noble war when
fought in the interest of the many, but fraught with great danger
to each individual man. It is the fear which should not be, rather
than the 'hope which is in us,' that leads men in these days to
drape Death in a flowery mantle, to lay stress on the shortness of