（外文电子版资料）Simak, Clifford D - The Autumn Land.pdfVIP

file:///G|/rah/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20The%20Autumn%20Land.txt Title : The Autumn Land Author : Clifford D. Simak Original copyright year: 1971 Genre : science fiction Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this book Source : scanned and OCR-read from a hardback edition with Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0, proofread in MS Word 2000. Date of e-text : February 17, 2000 Prepared by : Anada Sucka Anticopyright 2000. All rights reversed. ====================================================================== The Autumn Land Clifford D. Simak He sat on the porch in the rocking chair, with the loose board creaking as he rocked. Across the street the old white-haired lady cut a bouquet of chrysanthemums in the never-ending autumn. Where he could see between the ancient houses to the distant woods and wastelands, a soft Indian- summer blue lay upon the land. The entire village was soft and quiet, as old things often are - a place constructed for a dreaming mind rather than a living being. It was an hour too early for his other old and shaky neighbor to come fumbling down the grass-grown sidewalk, tapping the bricks with his seeking cane. And he would not hear the distant children at their play until dusk had fallen - if he heard them then. He did not always hear them. There were books to read, but he did not want to read them. He could go into the backyard and spade and rake the garden once again, reducing the soil to a finer texture to receive the seed when it could be planted - if it ever could be planted - but there was slight incentive in the further preparation of a seed bed against a spring that never came. Earlier, much earlier, before he knew about the autumn and the spring, he had mentioned garden seeds to the Milkman, who had been very much embarrassed. He had walked the magic miles and left the world behind in bitterness and when he first h