small and lonely farms hiding away in the heart of it. The
trees are for the most part young growth of oak or pine, though I could
show you yet many a noble company of great pines that once would have
been marked with the king's arrow, and many a royal old oak which has
been overlooked in the search for ships' knees and plank for the navy
yard, and piles for the always shaky, up-hill and down, pleasant old
Portsmouth bridge. The part of these woods which I know best lies on
either side the already old new road to York on the Rocky Hills, and
here I often ride, or even take perilous rough drives through the
cart-paths, the wood roads which are busy thoroughfares in the winter,
and are silent and shady, narrowed by green branches and carpeted with
slender brakes, and seldom traveled over, except by me, all summer long.

It was a great surprise, or a succession of surprises, one summer, when
I found that every one of the old uneven tracks led to or at least led
by what had once been a clearing, and in old days must have been the
secluded home of some of the earliest adventurous farmers of this
region. It must have taken great courage, I think, to strike the first
blow of one's axe here in the woods, and it must have been a brave
certainty of one's perseverance that looked forward to the smooth field
which was to succeed the unfruitful wilderness. The farms were far
enough apart to be very lonely, and I suppose at first the cry of fierce
wild creatures in the forest was an every-day sound, and the Indians
stole like snakes through the bushes and crept from tree to tree about
the houses watching, begging, and plundering, over and over again. There
are some of these farms still occupied, where the land seems to have
become thoroughly civilized, but most of them were deserted long ago;
the people gave up the fight with such a persistent willfulness and
wildness of nature and went away to the village, or to find more
tractable soil and kindlier neighborhoods.

I do not know why it is these silent, forgotten places are so
delightful to me; there is one which I always call my farm, and it was a
long time after I knew it well before I could find out to whom it had
once belonged. In some strange way the place has become a part of my
world and to belong to my thoughts and my life.

I suppose every one can say, "I have a little kingdom where I give
laws." Each of us has truly a kingdom in thought, and a certain
spiritual possessio