A day or two after came the veritable soft-looking, sweet-breathing Indian-Summer--"our thunder." No other clime has it. Autumn expires in a rain-storm of three months in Italy; and it is choked to death with a wet fog in England; but in this new world of ours, "our own green forest land," as Halleck beautifully says, it swoons away often in a delicious trance, during which the sky is filled with sleep, and the earth hushes itself into the most peaceful and placid repose. There it lies basking away until with one growl old Winter springs upon Nature, locks her in icy fetters, and covers her bosom with a white mantle that generally stays there until Spring comes with her soft eye and blue-bird voice to make us all glad again.
Well, this beautiful season arrived as aforesaid, and a day "turned up" that seemed to be extracted from the very core of the season's sweetness. The landscape was plunged into a thick mist at sunrise, but that gradually dwindled away until naught remained but a delicate dreamy film of tremulous purple, that seemed every instant as if it would melt from the near prospect. Further off, however, the film deepened into rich smoke, and at the base of the horizon it was decided mist, bearing a tinge, however, borrowed from the wood-violet. The mountains could be discerned, and that was all, and they only by reason of a faint jagged line struggling through the veil proclaiming their summits. The dome above was a tender mixture of blue and silver; and as for the sunshine, it was tempered and shaded down into a tint like the blush in the tinted hollow of the sea-shell.
It was the very day for a ramble in the woods; so Benning, Watson, and I, called at the dwelling of three charming sisters, to ask their mamma's consent (and their own) to accompany us. These three Graces all differed from each other in their styles of beauty. The eyes of one were of sparkling ebony, those of the other looked as if the "summer heaven's delicious blue" had stained them, whilst the third's seemed as though they had caught their hue from the glittering gray that is sometimes seen just above the gold of a cloudless sunset.
We turned down the green lane that led from the village street, and were soon in the forests. The half-muffled sunlight stole down sweetly and tenderly through the chaos of naked branches overhead; and there was a light crisp, crackling sound running through the dry fallen leaves, as though they had become tired of their position, and were striving to turn over. So quiet was the air that even this faint sound was distinctly audible. Hark! whang! whang! there rings the woodman's axe--crack! crash! b-o-o-m!--Hurrah! what thunder that little keen instrument has waked up there, and what power it has! Say, ye wild, deep forests, that have shrunk into rocky ravines, and retreated to steep mountains, what caused ye to flee away from the valleys and uplands of your dominion? Answer, fierce eagle! what drove thee from thy pine of centuries to the desolate and wind-swept peak, where alone thou couldst rear thy brood in safety? Tell, thou savage panther, what made the daylight flash into thy den so suddenly, that thou didst think thy eye-balls were extinguished?