The Hand of Autumn.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 142, 16 June 1906, Page 10

The Hand of Autumn.

There is something saddening in the hanß of Autumn, something that brings regrets and stirs longings totally differenfito the longings that come when Spring's caress lightly touches tho land with baby fingers into life ; something different even to the hand of Summer. Summer's touch leads on to strong and vigorous life, maturing the lives which Spring has brought into being, but Autumn's hand does neither of these things. Rather, it deadens life, slowly and vory- beautifully, but deaden it it does, not as the clammy touch of Winter's cold fingers do once they grip round the annual lives, but gradually, surely, and so gorgeously that the onlooker scarcely realises that this clutch is tho forerunner of death. In the open country, in the valleys and on the mountains, Autumn lays its hand on nature, and lo ! it flames into colours unknown to the dwellers in the towns and cities. The dainty spring and Summer flowers are killed by the first touch of the year's Fall, but the hardier ones bloom on in their strong rich colouring, glorying in their own hardihood. The dahlias — red, purple, gold, and white — blaze out from their setting of greenery in every garden on the mountains, and the sunflowers nod complacently over the grey wooden palings, their black hearts standing out conspicuously from their serrated surroundings of a myriad of golden petals. Here and there a scarlet geranium still holds a wealth of bloom which" refuses to acknowledge the hand of the destroyer. The dainty heads will brighten tho garden till the early frosts descend, stiffening the joyous petals on the parent stem, and the sun, when he disperses the hosts of the frost king, will not draw the petals open and up to him again, but rather help in their final downfall. A late-seasoned rose droops halfheartedly from its bush ; a few violets still peep out from their thick covering of heart-shaped leaves, and the bachel-or's-buttons lean Hown to them as if longing to catch the last faint odours of their little purple friend's breath ere they disappear for good till Spring reawakens them again after their long sleep. All the creeping plants, whose young tendrils have made the verandahs fairy bowers for the past six months, turn from green to red and ochre naming against the landscape, and giving a touch of living fire to the scattered dwelling places on the mountain slopes. j And the mountains themselves — more glorious even than the glittering waters of the harbour, for the majesty of the mountains forbids rather than invites life among them, so grand, so awe-in-spiring it is— they feel the hand of Autumn even as the live clothing of the plain does. Into their wonderful blueness creeps a deeper note ; the shadows sweeping their mighty flanks bite sharper, and the green of their foliage nestling at their feet takes on an umber tinge that spreads almost to blood-red when the sun's last kisses rest lightly on it, ere the giver of light sinks behind the giant peaks to rest. The undergrowth, for all its moisture, also feels the hand of Autumn. The bracken's emerald changes into royal reds ; tho reds merge into golds equally as regal, and these again, 'neath the fingers of the Fall, pale into almost milkwhite tints. Round the roots of the bracken there is still often a touch of j vivid green. A few young shoots of belated grass have shot up through the warm-brown earth to seek the light above. They do not live long, however. For a day — perhaps two days — they will grow all too fast ; then down swoops the chilling frost, and they drop back to ! the earth as brown as it is, ! In the mountains there is no more ; beatuiful season than the Autumn, accompanied as it is with wondrous cloud shapes against the fa^r blue of the sky, and with sunsets so magnificent thut the beauty of the earth is but poor compared with them. Autumn may be the sad season of the year to some— to tho pessimists perhaps — but to those who can ace the good in all things, Autumn -is a bejiutifler of . N.iture, an artist so rare and true in touch and tone that humans can only bow down their heads before such limning and acknowledge as the Maker did of His first work at creation's dawn — that "it is pood." — Eric Jeffrey, in tho Sydney Mail.