78 DYER'S HOLLOW. 
dicating an ostentatious spirit, ought rather 
to be taken as a mark of humility. 
All things considered, I should hardly 
choose to settle for life in Dyer’s Hollow; 
but with every recollection of the place I 
somehow feel as if its score or two of inhab- 
itants were favored above other men. Why 
is it that people living thus by themselves, 
and known thus transiently and from the 
outside as it were, always seem in memory 
like dwellers in some land of romance? I 
cannot tell, but so it is; and whoever has 
such a picture on the wall of his mind will 
do well, perhaps, never to put the original 
beside.it. Yet I donot mean to speak quite 
thus of Dyer’s Hollow. Once more, at 
least, I hope to walk the length of that strag- 
gling road. As | think of it now, I behold 
again those beds of shining bearberry (“‘re- 
splendent’”’ would be none too fine a word; 
there is no plant for which the sunlight does 
more), loaded with a wealth of handsome red 
fruit. The beach-plum crop was a failure; 
plum wine, of the goodness of which I heard 
enthusiastic reports, would be scarce; but 
one needed only to look at the bearberry 
patches to perceive that Cape Cod sand was 
