rity of mankind, swarming in these little spots, or scuttling to and
fro along the valleys on those slender lines, fondly dream they are
acquainted with the land in which they live. But beyond and around all
this rises the wide, bare face of the country, which they will never know--
the great patches of second-growth woods, the mountain pastures sown
thick with stones, the barren acres of the hillside farmer--a desolate
land, latticed with gray New England roads, dotted with commonplace or
neglected houses, and pitted with the staring cellars of the abandoned
homes of disheartened and defeated men.

Out here in this semi-obscurity, where the regulating forces of society
grow tardy and weak, strange and dangerous beings move to and fro,
avoiding the apprehension of the law. Occasionally we hear of them--of
some shrewd and desperate city fugitives brought to bay in a corner of the
woods, or some brutal farmhouse murderer still lurking uncaptured among
the hills. Often they pass through the country and out beyond, where they
are never seen again.

In the extreme southwestern corner of the State the railroads do not come;
the vacant spaces grow between the country roads, and the cities dwindle
down to half-deserted crossroads hamlets. Here the surface of the map is
covered up with the tortuous wrinkles of the hills. It is a beautiful but
useless place. As far as you can see, low, unformed lumps of mountains lie
jumbled aimlessly together between the ragged sky lines, or little silent
cups of valleys stare up between them at their solitary patch of sky. It
seems a sort of waste yard of creation, flung full of the remnants of the
making of the earth.

--George Kibbe Turner: _Across the State_ ("McClure's").

When once the shrinking dizzy spell was gone,
I saw below me, like a jeweled cup,
The valley hollowed to its heaven-kissed lip--
The serrate green against the serrate blue--
Brimming with beauty's essence; palpitant
With a divine elixir--lucent floods
Poured from the golden chalice of the sun,
At which my spirit drank with conscious growth,
And drank again with still expanding scope
Of comprehension and of faculty.

I felt the bud of being in me burst
With full, unfolding petals to a rose,
And fragrant breath that flooded all the scene.
By sudden insight of myself I knew
That I was greater than the scene,--that deep
Within my nature was a wondrous world,
Broader than that I gazed on, and informed
With a divin