No More Learning

They are then brown above, but purple beneath. With their narrow lobes
and their bold, deep scallops reaching almost to the middle, they
suggest that the material must be cheap, or else there has been a
lavish expense in their creation, as if so much had been cut out. Or
else they seem to us the remnants of the stuff out of which leaves
have been cut with a die. Indeed, when they lie thus one upon another,
they remind me of a pile of scrap-tin.

Or bring one home, and study it closely at your leisure, by the
fireside. It is a type, not from any Oxford font, not in the Basque
nor the arrow-headed character, not found on the Rosetta Stone, but
destined to be copied in sculpture one day, if they ever get to
whittling stone here. What a wild and pleasing outline, a combination
of graceful curves and angles! The eye rests with equal delight on
what is not leaf and on what is leaf,--on the broad, free, open
sinuses, and on the long, sharp, bristle-pointed lobes. A simple oval
outline would include it all, if you connected the points of the leaf;
but how much richer is it than that, with its half-dozen deep
scallops, in which the eye and thought of the beholder are embayed! If
I were a drawing-master, I would set my pupils to copying these
leaves, that they might learn to draw firmly and gracefully.

Regarded as water, it is like a pond with half a dozen broad rounded
promontories extending nearly to its middle, half from each side,
while its watery bays extend far inland, like sharp friths, at each of
whose heads several fine streams empty in,--almost a leafy
archipelago.

But it oftener suggests land, and, as Dionysius and Pliny compared the
form of the Morea to that of the leaf of the Oriental plane tree, so
this leaf reminds me of some fair wild island in the ocean, whose
extensive coast, alternate rounded bays with smooth strands, and
sharp-pointed rocky capes, mark it as fitted for the habitation of
man, and destined to become a centre of civilization at last. To the
sailor's eye, it is a much indented shore. Is it not, in fact, a shore
to the aerial ocean, on which the windy surf beats? At sight of this
leaf we are all mariners,--if not vikings, buccaneers, and
filibusters.
Both our love of repose and our spirit of adventure are
addressed. In our most casual glance, perchance, we think that if we
succeed in doubling those sharp capes we shall find deep, smooth, and
secure havens in the ample bays. How different from the white oak
leaf, with its rounded headlands, on which no lighthouse need be
placed! That is an England, with its long civil history, that may be
read. This is some still unsettled New-found Island or Celebes. Shall
we go and be rajahs there?

By the twenty-sixth of October the large scarlet oaks are in their
prime, when other oaks are usually withered. They have been kindling
their fires for a week past, and now generally burst into a blaze.
This alone of _our_ indigenous deciduous trees (excepting the
dogwood, of which I do not know half a dozen, and they are but large
bushes) is now in its glory. The two aspens and the sugar maple come
nearest to it in date, but they have lost the greater part of their
leaves. Of evergreens, only the pitch pine is still commonly bright.

But it requires a particular alertness, if not devotion to these
phenomena, to appreciate the wide-spread, but late and unexpected
glory of the scarlet oaks. I do not speak here of the small trees and
shrubs, which are commonly observed, and which are now withered, but
of the large trees. Most go in and shut their doors, thinking that
bleak and colorless November has already come, when some of the most
brilliant and memorable colors are not yet lit.

This very perfect and vigorous one, about forty feet high, standing in
an open pasture, which was quite glossy green on the twelfth, is now,
the twenty-sixth, completely changed to bright dark-scarlet,--every
leaf, between you and the sun, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet
dye. The whole tree is much like a heart in form, as well as color.