58 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 
Shore, though at a point somewhat farther 
inland, and in a town where I was not likely 
to lose myself, least of all in any out-of- 
the-way woodland road. In short, I spent 
Christmas on my native heath, —a not in- 
appropriate word, by the bye, for a region 
so largely grown up to huckleberry bushes. 
‘“‘Ffolbrook’s meadows,”’ and “Norton pas- 
ture!’?— the names are not to be found on 
any map, and will convey no meaning to my 
readers; but in my ears they awaken mem- 
ories of many and many a sunny hour. On 
this holiday I revisited them both. Warm 
as it was, boys and girls were skating on the 
meadows (in spite of their name, these have 
been nothing but a pond for as long as I 
can remember), and I stood awhile by the 
old Ross cellar, watching their evolutions. 
How bright and cheery it was in the little 
sheltered clearing, with nothing in sight but 
the leafless woods and the ice-covered pond! 
“‘Shan’t I take your coat?” the sun seemed 
to be asking. At my elbow stood a bunch 
of lilac bushes (“‘laylocks”’ they were prob- 
ably called by the man who set them out‘) 
1 So they were called, too, by that lover of flowers, 
Walter Savage Landor, who, as his biographer says, fol- 
