Impressions 



and the wild beasts of the boundless woods are 

 pictured to the mind. The tamed, stale, flat and 

 unprofitable actual outlook utterly fades away. 

 I, for one, verily see the past brought back 

 again. The highway is no longer the throbbing 

 artery of ceaseless trade. I tread upon moss, 

 not the bare earth, and then, rested, walk as in 

 a dream. It is now the old " bridle-stye " that 

 the early Quakers knew. Soon I reach the 

 nearest village, a colonial hamlet that has known 

 no serious change since its natal day. It crys- 

 tallized at a creek-side point on the old trail and 

 to-day is and for almost a century and a half 

 has been resting from the arduous labor of a 

 week's excitement when, in 1756, an Indian pow- 

 wow occurred about its oldest oak and twenty- 

 two years later a little muttering of revolution- 

 ary thunder startled it again. Then it was that 

 the door of progress was shut upon it and never 

 from behind it has been heard one word of pro- 

 test. Now, the world must knock with empha- 

 sis if it would be heard, and all too likely timid 

 folk would merely peep through Venetian blinds 

 in response and ponder over the desirability of 

 further notice. Such was my wool-gathering 

 as I passed by and reached the great tree that 



31 



