It came racing across the fields laden with harvest scents,
blustering a bit now and then enough to bring down a shower of nuts or
to make the yellow corn in the shocks in the fields rustle ominously of
a winter soon to come.
The maples on the bluff were garmented in royal crimson brocaded with
yellow, the buck-bushes that grew along the edges of the rocks were
strung with magenta berries and regiments of tall royal purple iron
weeds and yellow-plumed golden-rod were marshaled in squads and clumps
for a background for the long tables.
Jane and I with Henrietta were out by the old gray moss rock at the
first break of day, installing Jasper and Petunia and a few of their
_confreres_. Jasper has always been king of all Glendale barbecue-pits
and he had had them dug the day before and filled with dry hickory fires
all night, and his mien was so haughty that I trembled for the slaves
under his command. His basket of "yarbs" was under the side of the rock
in hoodoo-like shadows and the wagons of poor, innocent, sacrificed
lambs and turkeys and sucking-pigs were backed up by the largest
infernal pit. Petunia was already elbow deep in a cedar tub of corn meal
for the pones, and another minion was shucking late roasting-ears and
washing the sweet potatoes to be packed down with the meat by eight
o-clock. A wagon was to collect the baked hams and sandwiches and
biscuits and confections of all variety and pedigree from the rest of
the League at ten o'clock.
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