The opening of Chapter X
```"The autumnal glories all have pass'd away!
````The forest leaves no more in hectic red
```Give glowing tokens of their brief decay,
````But scatter'd lie, or rustle to the tread,
```Like whisper'd warnings from the moldering dead.
````The naked trees stretch out their arms all day.
```And each bald hill-top lifts its reverend head
````As if for some new covering to pray."
`````Mrs. E. C. Kinney.=
HE sun was shining in its noontide glory when I crossed the great Trenton Bridge over the Delaware to Morrisville, and reined my horse to the right into the Falsington road, for Philadelphia, twenty-eight miles distant. Unlike a summer rain, the storm developed no new beauties in the fields and orchards, but "a mantle dun" continued to overspread the landscape, and a cold north wind was heralding the approach of winter. I was now in the fertile region of "old Bucks" * in Pennsylvania, and with a loose rein traversed the gentle undulating country over which the Continental battalions often marched and countermarched. It was the anniversary of the evacuation of New York by the British--the departure of the last hostile foot from [[November 25, 1783]] our free shores.