As the fall season comes to us in Ontario the result of the last summer’s bountifulness is visibly apparent. On every side the steady, unremitting drone or hum of the threshing-machines daily falls upon the ear, and well we know that for every hour the thresher runs, bushels upon bushels of grain are being gathered into the farmers’ granaries. Dust-begrimed, sweaty men, with forks in hand, are all the time endeavoring to stop its spacious maw, but never succeeding, for its capacity of digestion is inexorable, and after each forkful it is quite as ready again for another, and so the work goes on by the hour (and the hum comes to the listener two miles away, on the wind), giving the husbandman an abundance for the season. There is scarcely a cessation until the noon hour arrives, when the shrill, ambitious scream of the piping engine which furnishes the motive power gives the welcome warning that dinner is ready. The noon hour past, again a scream from the ambitious engine, as if it would try to be entered among the fellowship of its greater brother engines in our manufactories and upon our railways. With their shirts half dry the farmers again tend to the machine’s voracious maw, knowing full well that it’s only a question of a few minutes, when the increased perspiration will wet them as fully as before.
The golden apples of Hesperides were never more beautiful or pleasing to the eye than those of our orchards, laden with their golden fruit. It is presumed these golden apples were oranges, and even so, it is just a question if they ever were prettier than many of our colored apples. The “King” with its red cheeks, or the “Fameuse,” and many other kinds will rival the famed oranges for beauty any day. Manifestly one of the prettiest sights in nature is to see an orchard of considerable size in Ontario, heavily laden with fruit, and its limbs bending to the ground with their burdens. Let the breeze just gently stir the leaves, and sway the branches, and the dancing sunbeams glinting upon the sheen of the apples’ sides, and then as you walk through and among the trees, nature smiles at you, and you realize that ours is indeed a beauteous and kindly land.
And this is our autumn, clearly defined, and in a few days to be rendered doubly beautiful as the first frosts touch the foliage upon the maples, the birches, and the beeches, and transform their leaves into a broad gallery of the brightest and most variegated colors. Tropical dwellers, who have never seen the transformation, know not of the beauty this world in our north temperate zone affords. It is supposed to be ever green in the tropics, but the winter green down there is not beautiful, but a dull, dusty, dark russet. This decided change, which our fall season produces, they can have no conception of, and we would not trade our season with them if we could. Man loves variety. Universal green one tires of, but our recurring seasons always awaken in us a zest, and we love them in their turn.