10 NEW HAMPSHIRE 



how few things a farmer can do that will not be 

 of benefit to others beside himself. Surely the 

 man who piled these boulders for the advantage 

 of his hay crop never expected them to serve as 

 a text for preaching. 



The cloud drops again, and is at its old trick 

 of exaggeration. A bird that I take for a robin 

 turns out to be a sparrow. Did it look larger 

 because it seemed to be farther away than it really 

 was? Or is it seen now as it actually is, my 

 vision not being deceived, but rather corrected 

 of an habitual error ? The fog makes for me a 

 newer and stranger world, at any rate ; I am 

 farther from home because of it ; another day's 

 travel might have done less for me. And for all 

 that, I am not sorry when it rises again, and the 

 hills come out. How beautiful they are ! They 

 will hardly be more so, I think, when the June 

 foliage replaces the square miles of bare boughs 

 which now give them a blue-purple tint, inter- 

 rupted here and there by patches of new yellow- 

 green poplar leaves a veritable illumination, 

 sun-bright even in this sunless weather or a 

 few sombre evergreens. 



As I get away from the farm, the mountain 

 woods on either side seem to be filled with some- 

 thing like a chorus of rose-breasted grosbeaks. 

 Except for a few days at Highlands, North Caro- 



