The Country of the Pointed Firs

"At last it was the time of late summer, when the house was cool and damp in the morning, and all the light seemed to come through green leaves; but at the first step out of doors the sunshine always laid a warm hand on my shoulder, and the clear, high sky seemed to lift quickly as I looked at it. There was no autumnal mist nor any August fog; instead of these, the sky and the hills, with every bush of bay and every fir-top, gained a deeper color and a sharper clearness. There was something shining in the air, and a kind of lustre on the pasture grass – a northern look that, except at this moment of the year, one must go far to seek. The sunshine of a northern summer was coming to its lovely end."

Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs ~ 1896