Postcard from the Past: Autumn is Here

“Autumn is Here” proclaims a headline in the Sept. 19, 1908 issue of the Riverton Republican, followed by this article:

Autumn is here. Those melancholy days, as the poet sang them, are come, the saddest of the year. But after all, Lowell did not evidently voice the sentiment of the enthusiastic nimrod, who, when the autumn woods take on the various tints of the rainbow, shoulders his gun and starts for a month’s hunt after big game.

This is one of the most delightful seasons of the whole year. 

Touches of melancholy may come. Some hearts may be dark and dreary. Nevertheless, when the autumn does appear, vegetation takes on the color of the rainbow, the leaves fall, the grain is threshed, the crops of the year and harvests of the season are gathered.

The great American sport, known as baseball, is laid upon the shelf when autumn appears on the scene. Football comes in with its – rather than “hair-splitting” let us say “head-splitting” – stunts. 

Summer sports in general are not as numerous as in July and August. But hunting, that is the great sport as we have previously mentioned.

The nature lover cannot help but appreciate autumn, with all of her beautiful colors and her exquisite and magnificent scenery. No other time in the whole year presents such a picturesque landscape as autumn, especially the days of October.

The autumn days bring the culmination of the year’s toil. 

While we sweat and groaned at the hot, sultry days of July and August, when the thermometer went high and the humidity was overwhelming, then it was that nature was making the harvests for man so he could have something for his labor, and remuneration for his exorbitant expenditure of perspiration. All of these things are necessary. 

We fail to realize it perhaps at the time, but nevertheless, the Earth may yield her best, we must have unpleasant weather sometimes. Mingled with the sunshine, there must be some days of clouds and rainfall.