44 BY-WAVS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
the joy awaiting us on the other. It is, in 
other words, apparently almost impossible for 
Americans to fully recognize and appreciate 
the richness of “local color” everywhere of- 
fered at home. If we knew our country as well 
as the English know theirs we should have a 
stronger vital energy in our literature and art. 
Of course we lack that long perspective and rich 
historical atmosphere belonging to old coun- 
tries, but as a nation we are just at that age 
when our genius should find its note. Our 
highways are reasonably good, our lanes and 
by-ways are inviting, our people are hospitable 
and communicative. ‘There is no good reason 
why some tourists, of a more interesting sort 
than tax-gatherers and lightning-rod peddlers, 
should not explore the pastoral districts where 
the richest materials for poetry, romance, and 
art may be had for the taking. 
Rummaging the remote nooks of literature— 
the pages of Chaucer and Spenser, and Izaak 
Walton and Roger Ascham, or Francois Villon 
and Marot and Ronsard, is very pleasing and 
profitable ; but the living, budding, redolent, 
and resonant by-ways of our own neighborhoods 
offer a richer reward. There are moments 
when there are a fragrance and savor, so to 
speak, in the song of a plough-boy heard across 
the fresh-turned fields. One pauses by the 
fence or hedge-row to enjoy what no book or 
picture can quite give. A breath of perfume 
from the blooming top of a wild crab-apple tree, 
along with the hum of the bees at work there, 
is a poem much older than any ball .de or trio- 
let, and fresher and sweeter than any song of 
troubadour or any idyl of Greek lyrist. What 
matters it whether one walks, or rides a tri- 
