As everybody knows, the day was the most blessed of blunders. Those single-minded, grand old fellows—old when they were young—that drifted across the sea in the cup of a Flower like a parcel of bees, bringing, some of them, their stings with them, and from whose rude beginnings this broad continent now hums like a hive in June, had garnered their corn, and tugged up their back-logs, and kicked the light snow of "squaw winter" from their Spanish-leather boots, and hung up their tall hats on the pegs behind the door, and picked their flints for such game as red Indian and black bear, and spread open their Bibles, and made ready for a sojourn before the fire; then came one of the American savages they never shot at—to-wit: Indian Summer.
For past the yellow regiments of corn
There came an Indian maiden, autumn-born;
And June returned and held her by the hand,
And led Time's smiling Ruth through all the land.
So they made ready for a second planting right away, and declared it a goodly land, where a very thin slice of autumn was sandwiched between two summers, and decreed a Thanksgiving, and called the neighbors together, and lifted up their voices and sang some such quaint song as—
"Ye monsters of the bubbling deep,
Your Maker's praises spout;
Up from your sands, ye codlings, peep,
And wag your tails about!"