154 VIRGINIA 



was one of the first things I noticed, the 

 sloping ground covered with large, round, 

 shiny, purplish-green (evergreen) leaves, all 

 exquisitely crinkled and toothed. With no- 

 thing but the leaves to depend upon, I could 

 only conjecture the plant to be galax, a 

 name which caught my eye by the sheerest 

 accident, as I turned the pages of the Man- 

 ual looking for something else ; but the con- 

 jecture turned out to be a sound one, as the 

 sagacious reader will have already inferred 

 from the fact of its mention. 



In such a place there was no taking many 

 steps without a halt. My gait was rather a 

 progressive standing still than an actual 

 progress ; so that it mattered little whither 

 or how far the path might carry me. I 

 was not going somewhere, I was already 

 there ; or rather, I was both at once. 

 Every stroller will know what I mean. Fru- 

 ition and expectation were on my tongue 

 together; to risk an unscriptural paradox, 

 what I saw I yet hoped for. The brook, 

 tumbling noisily downward, in some 

 places over almost regular flights of stone 

 steps, now in broad sunshine, now in the 

 shade of pines and hemlocks and rhododen- 



