November Days

Fi-om the New York Tribune. The man who welcomes in Novembor has yet to be bom. Every other ruonth has had its crown and lts poet, from maiden May t.o hoary December; but only Hood, and that in a fit of ill-temper, has sung this wretched season, as cursed of God and man, and wrapped it as iu a winding sheet, in an immortal fog. English fog does not follow it to this country, bat even here is the most cantankerous, cross-grained uionth of the year, set apart to moods, and intolerable, as all other moody people. You go out dressed in your airy finery to suit the morning sunshine, and come back drenched with a cold rain. You wrap yourself in ñannels and furs to brave the nipping wintry wind, and in an hour find a blazing sun overhead and the perspiration streaming over your sweltering face. The wild ivy that draped your neighbor's house through the Pall with royal crimson, on the first day of November turna into a web of' dry sticks, through which the red brick glare tediously at you. The garden, with its late tiuts of purple, gleaming ruby, and mellow bronzes, set in the dark inossy greens of October, becomes, after a blaok frost, a soft, quashy stretch of mud and dead leaves, wherein yellow cucuinbers and rotten tomatoes lie shameless in their decay. Even in the markets the dead Su in nier appears in a miserable funeral show of haggard peaches, wilted oabbages, the very ghosts of corn. Deluded by a frosty day, you venture on a Winter breakl'ast of rich meats and hol cakes, and are left to cry out "mea culpa '" to your stomach for a week thereattor, You wonder why Church and State decree thanksgiving in suoh a day of false prettmses, and set it down as a grim touch of irony. You understand why May should be likened to your shy school girl neighbor, or the full-lipped, yellow-haired beauty over the way should be the certain type of June; but November reminds you of nobody, and nothing but that lean, grim Banks, friend of your youth, known as the cynic, the misanthropic genius, the Poe of the college class, whom you would have liked to punch in the head a dozen times a day, but refrained on account of the " divine afflatus" which was popularly supposed to possess him. The divine afflatus has landed him in a newspaper office as writer of book notices, which was but shabby treatment, comrnon sense and good humor having done better for evory one of his college mates. The world in general deals with Banks precisely as the college boys did ; it has the largest liberty for eccentrioity ; the man with " a way" of his own has his applause and admirers, whether his freak happens to be crime or only boorishness, whiie hiR fat jog-trot brother is hedged in by a thousand moral iaws besides those written on the tableta of atone. Whether Banka choo8ea to cut up a new book out of aheer wantonness of ill temper, or to go to bed and rise up in a suioidal, despairing, dumbness whicb makes their home a foretaste of heil to his light-hearted children, it is all set down to the account of his genius. He is no more reaponsible for it than is November for its muddy skies and dashes of cold rain. There are plenty of Bankers in the world. Ambitious men and sallow women - every one of U8 with fine tastes and lean pocketbooks - have their November days, their moods of oauseless despondenoy and grmpishnesa for which we, like Banks, can find some fine sesthetic reason. - Banks's wife, a roly-poly red-cheeked little woman, never looks for this ffisthetic cause ; she looks and aighs as though she gave full credit to his disgust with lifo and longing to have done with it ; then she goes to the kitchen and tosses up some savory little dish for him. She contrives to secure him two or three hours' sleep in the morning ; she gives him podophyllin clandeatinely. Under this treatment Banks is acquiring of late more cheerful views of life, and also some flesh on his bones. It is astonishing, tuo, how mauy clever books are sent nowadays to his desk for notice. Mrs. Banks is not a learned woman or progressive at all ; but with her house full of nervous, bilious, excitable children, she discovers a wonderful skill and infinite tact in applying her mental lotions, salves, and irritants. W hen she oalled thein to read laat Sunday evening, and they came in, peevish and crying and squabbling, she put the Bible away and told some funny stories of her school-days, until they shouted with delight, and then they had a little feast of jelly and grapes and cream, and said their prayeis with suiiling faces, and sank to sleep with a vague idea of a good world to live in and a good Lord watahing overhead. This little woman, in time of joy or great trouble, brings her faith in God, protound and glad as it is, directly to bear in the family ; but in times of moodiness or melancholy she goos to the stomach or the atmosphere for a cause and a reniedy. It would be worth while for us to take a hint from her, and in our November days be quite sure a false, hollow world or unjust Creator has nothing whatever to do with our despondency, but a late supperor malarious night air, just as certainly aa that these " saddest days of the year" owe their melancholy to black frosts.