Driving home, at dusk, we passed field after field of Indian Warriors, corn-stacks, all looking the same way, with golden pumpkins among them; and suddenly, over the eastern ridge, the great round yellow Hunter’s Moon rose.
It was strange, later, to see the oaks and sugar maples, towers of _gold_, instead of towers of green, in the moonlight.
A few days later we had a three days’ storm of rain and heavy wind, and then the golden harvest lay on the ground. It was heaped and piled along the roadsides in winrows, through which the children scuffed and frolicked.
(The leaves in the town streets are burned, which is a waste, but if we were so thrifty as to keep them we should lose the autumn bonfires. I counted fourteen about the different streets, one evening, each with a glow lighting up the dusk, and giving out an indescribable sweet-and-acrid smell as the smoke poured out in cream-white swirls, almost thick enough to be felt. The men in charge of them looked black against the blaze, and a flock of children were scampering about each fire.) The day after the rain the leaves lay all through the woods like a yellow carpet, and threw up actual light. In some places they had fallen in lines and patterns, and, wet with rain and autumn dew, they gave out fragrance which was as sweet as wine.
Late in October there was sudden illness at a friend’s house. Every nurse in town was busy already, and we drove out to see if we could get Marcia Watson, at Watson’s Hill. Marcia is not a graduate nurse, but she knows what a sick woman wants, and what a sick household, paralyzed by the illness of its head, must have, and can set the whole stricken machinery in order again. She is a tiny creature, as merry as a squirrel, with quick, tranquil ways.
The Watson’s Hill district is six miles east of us. The Hill is a beech-wooded ridge, rocky through its whole length, and curving almost enough to suggest an amphitheatre. A good farming region lies spread out below it, and there is a village nucleus, a store, the Grange Hall, and a meeting-house. The hall was burnt, two years ago, and the whole neighborhood set to work to rebuild it. They had fifteen-cent entertainments and peanut parties, and sales of aprons and cooked food. The men did the building, giving their time, and the women cooked for the men, and this fall the last shingle of the substantial new building was laid.