As things were in my young days anybody who felt the need of a new costume of one kind or another had only to go out into the woods and pick it.

If your great-great-great-grandmother or I, for instance, wanted a new Spring suit we'd go hand in hand together to the orchard, and in the course of a half hour's steady work would fit ourselves out with a wardrobe that would have made this Queen of Sheba that the prophets are foretelling, look like thirty clam-shells; and what is more, a Spring costume was indeed a Spring costume and nothing else, for it was made of the freshest of the vernal leaves, beautiful in their early greens, and decorated here and there with a bit of a blossom that gave the whole a most fetching appearance.

And so it was with the other seasons.

For summer we used leaves of the vintage of July and August, deeper in their green, with the summer flowers for decoration.
Nothing ever so stirred the heart of man as Mother Eve decked out in her gown of rose leaves, or hollyhocks; and occasionally when we went travelling together dressed in our suits of hardy perennials, we were the cynosure of all eyes.

In the Autumn the rich red of the maple gave us an aspect of gayety in respect to our clothes that was most picturesque; and then when the winter blasts began to blow, our garments of pine, cedar and hemlock were not only warm, but appropriate and becoming.