The fire had fallen.  Flames no longer leapt from the beech logs; but on their under side, where a glow still lingered, embers fell.

THE AUTUMN AND THE FALL OF LEAVES

It is not true that the close of a life which ends in a natural fashion—­life which is permitted to put on the pomp of death and to go out in glory—­inclines the mind to repose.  It is not true of a day ending nor the passing of the year, nor of the fall of leaves.  Whatever permanent, uneasy question is native to men, comes forward most insistent and most loud at such times.

There is a house in my own county which is built of stone, whose gardens are fitted to the autumn.  It has level alleys standing high and banked with stone.  Their ornaments were carved under the influence of that restraint which marked the Stuarts.  They stand above old ponds, and are strewn at this moment with the leaves of elms.  These walks are like the Mailles of the Flemish cities, the walls of the French towns or the terraces of the Loire.  They are enjoyed to-day by whoever has seen all our time go racing by; they are the proper resting-places of the aged, and their spirit is felt especially in the fall of leaves.

At this season a sky which is of so delicate and faint a blue as to contain something of gentle mockery, and certainly more of tenderness, presides at the fall of leaves.  There is no air, no breath at all.  The leaves are so light that they sidle on their going downward, hesitating in that which is not void to them, and touching at last so imperceptibly the earth with which they are to mingle, that the gesture is much gentler than a salutation, and even more discreet than a discreet caress.

They make a little sound, less than the least of sounds.  No bird at night in the marshes rustles so slightly; no man, though men are the subtlest of living beings, put so evanescent a stress upon their sacred whispers or their prayers.  The leaves are hardly heard, but they are heard just so much that men also, who are destined at the end to grow glorious and to die, look up and hear them falling.

* * * * *

With what a pageantry of every sort is not that troubling symbol surrounded!  The scent of life is never fuller in the woods than now, for the ground is yielding up its memories.  The spring when it comes will not restore this fullness, nor these deep and ample recollections of the earth.  For the earth seems now to remember the drive of the ploughshare and its harrying; the seed, and the full bursting of it, the swelling and the completion of the harvest.  Up to the edge of the woods throughout the weald the earth has borne fruit; the barns are full, and the wheat is standing stacked in the fields, and there are orchards all around.  It is upon such a mood of parentage and of fruition that the dead leaves fall.