38 XATURE-STUDY REVIEW [12:1— Jan., 1916 



I can't begin to enumerate all the beauties of that last walk. 

 The smooth roads, the rough trail through the woods, the blue 

 skies, alluring September sunshine, pasture lands, corn fields, 

 turnip patches, old orchards, wood piles and old homes all had 

 their place. Some of those well-kept fields just conjured up a 

 picture of the Angelus. Possibly the best of the walk came 

 when in leaving Burnt Mills in all its picturesqueness we made in 

 going down stream a little picture of our own. What a jolt the 

 camera man's heart must have gotten in snapping such winsome- 

 ness. Over the glen was falling a soft light, whitening the spick- 

 span grayness of the big rocks and the little, the rugged and the 

 smooth, a foothold for pattering feet that now picked their way 

 so daintily mid-stream. Such a picture! Every man seemed 

 helping some fair maid of the party to safety. The background 

 of this pretty scene was the red and gold of dogwood and the 

 hickory. The laughter and the jest of many a pretty girl rivalled 

 the low gurgle of running water. Everybody had an exciting 

 time in a wild endeavor to get over the rocks gracefully and then 

 we struck a trail that was, indeed, some trail. John Boyle r 

 in school days you must have taken for your motto "Find a way 

 or make one." Yet I worit quarrel with that trail since it followed 

 the stream, and water they say goes like a woman by intuition. 

 The trail went up, and down, round and about; it beckoned and 

 it stayed, and when you thought you had lost it you'd really found 

 it and when you were sure you'd never see it again there it was 

 stealing along in front of you as demure as a maid. When you 

 had forgiven this trick of the trail there was a giant log to scramble 

 over, a river Styx to cross, or a miniature Alps to climb. 



You made us slink, John Boyle, like Indians through the thicket 

 and we never dared to stop and look around. No watchful 

 waiting obtained here for watchful running was our slogan and 

 failing to keep alert eyes on the job we went down in a heap and 

 kissed Mother Earth surreptitiously. All the while twilight was 

 surely creeping on, the stream going to sleep in its sluggishness and 

 the quiet woodland where laurel and azalea had gone to seed, 

 was enticing stragglers to tarry for a whiff of maidenhair fern and 

 fragrant spice wood. Long ago our weary arms had parted with 

 our bundles of goldenrod, asters, daisies and heaps of sword ferns. 



Night had come upon us with a jump. We thought the deep- 

 woods had merely shut out daylight for a while, but emerging 



