CHAPTER II 



WHERE CURRENTS RIP 



Why has no one ever written of walls and 

 fences? They are full of interest, and when con- 

 sidered from the point of view of the fences them- 

 selves, rather than what they confine, they are very 

 new and fertile subjects. There are invisible 

 fences, like the miles of wire on our western plains 

 which shine out only near sunset, until the autumn 

 tumble-weed makes them conspicuous all day, pil- 

 ing up fluffy but visible barriers. The stone 

 fences of New England seem indestructible, but 

 when the hands that built them are quiet or have 

 gone cityward, they drop, stone by stone, to the 

 ground and are scattered again. But even then 

 their paths can be traced for years by the lines of 

 cedars and cherries, bird-planted, carried there 

 by the wings of hundreds of generations past. 

 There are temporary fences, like the slanting sec- 

 tions which appear at exposed places along rail- 

 way lines to catch and drift the driving snow; and, 

 still more evanescent, the wooden walls which are 

 erected for the purpose of training police dogs 

 to jump. 



We in this country do not know how terrible 



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