corner of New England are the only proper
figures to paint into such landscapes. The twilight under tall pines
seems to be untenanted and to lack something, at first sight, as if
one opened the door of an empty house. A farmer passing through with
his axe is but an intruder, and children straying home from school
give one a feeling of solicitude at their unprotectedness. The pine
woods are the red man's house, and it may be hazardous even yet for
the gray farmhouses to stand so near the eaves of the forest. I have
noticed a distrust of the deep woods, among elderly people, which was
something more than a fear of losing their way. It was a feeling of
defenselessness against some unrecognized but malicious influence.

Driving through the long woodland way, shaded and chilly when you are
out of the sun; across the Great Works River and its pretty elm-grown
intervale; across the short bridges of brown brooks; delayed now and
then by the sight of ripe strawberries in sunny spots by the roadside,
one comes to a higher open country, where farm joins farm, and the
cleared fields lie all along the highway, while the woods are pushed
back a good distance on either hand. The wooded hills, bleak here and
there with granite ledges, rise beyond. The houses are beside the
road, with green door-yards and large barns, almost empty now, and
with wide doors standing open, as if they were already expecting the
hay crop to be brought in. The tall green grass is waving in the
fields as the wind goes over, and there is a fragrance of whiteweed
and ripe strawberries and clover blowing through the sunshiny barns,
with their lean sides and their festoons of brown, dusty cobwebs;
dull, comfortable creatures they appear to imaginative eyes, waiting
hungrily for their yearly meal. The eave-swallows are teasing their
sleepy shapes, like the birds which flit about great beasts; gay,
movable, irreverent, almost derisive, those barn swallows fly to and
fro in the still, clear air.

The noise of our wheels brings fewer faces to the windows than usual,
and we lose the pleasure of seeing some of our friends who are apt to
be looking out, and to whom we like to say good-day. Some funeral must
be taking place, or perhaps the women may have gone out into the
fields. It is hoeing-time and strawberry-time, and already we have
seen some of the younger women at work among the corn and potatoes.
One sight will be charming to remember. On a green hillside slopin