DYER’S HOLLOW. 79 
not wanting in fertility after a manner of its 
own. If its energies in the present instance 
happened to be devoted to ornament rather 
than utility, it was not for an untaxed and 
disinterested outsider to make complaint; 
least of all a man who was never a wine- 
bibber, and who believes, or thinks he be- 
lieves, in “‘art for art’s sake.’”’ Within the 
woods the ground was carpeted with trailing 
arbutus and a profusion of checkerberry 
vines, the latter yielding a few fat berries, 
almost or quite a year old, but still sound 
and spicy, still tasting “like tooth-powder,”’ 
as the benighted city boy expressed it. It 
was an especial pleasure to eat them here in 
Dyer’s Hollow, I had so many times done 
the same in another place, on the banks 
of Dyer’s Run. Lady’s-slippers likewise 
(nothing but leaves) looked homelike and 
friendly, and the wild lily of the valley, too, 
and the pipsissewa. Across the road from 
the old house nearest the ocean stood a still 
more ancient-seeming barn, long disused, to 
all appearance, but with old maid’s pinks, 
eatnip, and tall, stout pokeberry weeds yet 
flourishing beside it. Old maid’s pinks 
and catnip! Could that combination have 
been fortuitous ? 
