It
has faithfully husbanded its sap, and afforded a shelter to the
wandering bird, has long since ripened its seeds and committed them to
the winds, and has the satisfaction of knowing, perhaps, that a thousand
little well-behaved Maples are already settled in life somewhere. It
deserves well of Mapledom. Its leaves have been asking it from time to
time, in a whisper, "When shall we redden?" And now, in this month of
September, this month of travelling, when men are hastening to the
sea-side, or the mountains, or the lakes, this modest Maple, still
without budging an inch, travels in its reputation,--runs up its scarlet
flag on that hill-side, which shows that it has finished its summer's
work before all other trees, and withdraws from the contest. At the
eleventh hour of the year, the tree which no scrutiny could have
detected here when it was most industrious is thus, by the tint of its
maturity, by its very blushes, revealed at last to the careless and
distant traveller, and leads his thoughts away from the dusty road into
those brave solitudes which it inhabits. It flashes out conspicuous with
all the virtue and beauty of a Maple,--_Acer rubrum_. We may now read
its title, or _rubric_, clear. Its _virtues_, not its sins, are as
scarlet.
Notwithstanding the Red Maple is the most intense scarlet of any of our
trees, the Sugar-Maple has been the most celebrated, and Michaux in his
"Sylva" does not speak of the autumnal color of the former.
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