October Vagabonds by Richard Le Gallienne
Chapter 1 THE EPITAPH OF SUMMER
As I started out from the farm with a basket of potatoes, for our supper in the shack half a mile up the hillside, where we had made our Summer camp, my eye fell on a notice affixed to a gate-post, and, as I read it, my heart sank-sank as the sun was sinking yonder with wistful glory behind the purple ridge. I tore the paper from the gate-post and put it in my pocket with a sigh.
"It is true, then," I said to myself. "We have got to admit it. I must show this to Colin."
Then I continued my way across the empty, close-gleaned corn-field, across the railway track, and, plunging into the orchard on the other side, where here and there among the trees the torrents of apples were being already caught in boxes by the thrifty husbandman, began to breast the hill intersected with thickly wooded watercourses.
High up somewhere amid the cloud of beeches and buttonwood trees, our log cabin lay hid, in a gully made by the little stream that filled our pails with a silver trickle over a staircase of shelving rock, and up there Colin was already busy with his skilled French cookery, preparing our evening meal. The woods still made a pompous show of leaves, but I knew it to be a hollow sham, a mask of foliage soon to be stripped off by equinoctial fury, a precarious stage-setting, ready to be blown down at the first gusts from the north. A forlorn bird here and there made a thin piping, as it flitted homelessly amid the bleached long grasses, and the frail silk of the milkweed pods came floating along ghostlike on the evening breeze.
Yes! It was true. Summer was beginning to pack up, the great stage-carpenter was about to change the scene, and the great theatre was full of echoes and sighs and sounds of farewell. Of course, we had known it for some time, but had not had the heart to admit it to each other, could not find courage to say that one more golden Summer was at an end. But the paper I had torn from the roadside left us no further shred of illusion. There was an authoritative announcement there was no blinking, a notice to quit there was no gain-saying.
As I came to the crest of the hill, and in sight of the shack, shining with early lamp-light deep down among the trees of the gully, I could see Colin innocently at work on a salad, and hear him humming to himself his eternal "Vive le Capitaine."
It was too pathetic. I believe the tears came to my eyes.
"Colin," I said, as I at length arrived and set down my basket of potatoes, "read this."
He took the paper from my hand and read:
"Sun-up Baseball Club. September 19, 1908. Last Match of the Season"
He knew what I meant.
"Yes!" he said. "It is the epitaph of Summer."
Chapter 1 THE EPITAPH OF SUMMER
30/11/2017
Chapter 2 AT EVENING I CAME TO THE WOOD
30/11/2017
Chapter 3 TRESPASSERS WILL BE...
30/11/2017
Chapter 4 SALAD AND MOONSHINE
30/11/2017
Chapter 5 THE GREEN FRIEND
30/11/2017
Chapter 6 IN THE WAKE OF SUMMER
30/11/2017
Chapter 7 MAPS AND FAREWELLS
30/11/2017
Chapter 8 THE AMERICAN BLUEBIRD AND ITS SONG
30/11/2017
Chapter 9 DUTCH HOLLOW
30/11/2017
Chapter 10 WHERE THEY SING FROM MORNING TILL NIGHT
30/11/2017
Chapter 11 APPLE-LAND
30/11/2017
Chapter 12 ORCHARDS AND A LINE FROM VIRGIL
30/11/2017
Chapter 13 FELLOW WAYFARERS
30/11/2017
Chapter 14 THE OLD LADY OF THE WALNUTS AND OTHERS
30/11/2017
Chapter 15 THE MAN AT DANSVILLE
30/11/2017
Chapter 16 IN WHICH WE CATCH UP WITH SUMMER
30/11/2017
Chapter 17 CONTAINING VALUABLE STATISTICS
30/11/2017
Chapter 18 A DITHYRAMBUS OF BUTTEEMILK
30/11/2017
Chapter 19 A GROWL ABOUT AMERICAN COUNTRY HOTELS
30/11/2017
Chapter 20 ONIONS, PIGS AND HICKORY-NUTS
30/11/2017
Chapter 21 OCTOBER ROSES AND A YOUNG GIRL'S FACE
30/11/2017
Chapter 22 CONCERNING THE POPULAR TASTE IN SCENERY AND SOME HAPPY PEOPLE
30/11/2017
Chapter 23 THE SUSQUEHANNA
30/11/2017
Chapter 24 AND UNEXPECTEDLY THE LAST
30/11/2017
Other books by Richard Le Gallienne
More