34 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 



them. The snow fell Friday, the tunnels were 

 made before Saturday afternoon, yet one of 

 them was fully three hundred feet long. 



At the sunset hour a strange glow permeated 

 the mist, but it soon vanished. I left the hills 

 and crossed the Belmont meadows. The twi- 

 light was weird. The mud of the Concord turn- 

 pike seemed unnaturally yellow ; the pollard 

 willows assumed horrid shapes ; head-lights on 

 distant engines made menacing gleams on the 

 wet rails ; the great excavations in clay beds 

 near the brickyards were filled with black shad- 

 ows from which rose vapors ; brooks once clear, 

 now polluted by slaughter-houses, gave out foul 

 clouds of mist, and as electric lamps along the 

 road suddenly grew into glowing yellow balls in 

 the fog, they showed, rising above them, cruci- 

 fixes of this nineteenth century on which are 

 stretched the electric wires whose messages of 

 good or evil keep the nerves of society forever 

 uneasy. 



Sunday was a cheerful contrast to Saturday 

 night. With a young friend who was heart-full 

 of love for birds, flowers, the quiet of the woods 

 and the music of the brooks, I tramped from 

 Bussey Woods westward through the quiet lanes, 

 snow-covered pastures and secluded swamps 

 which fill the sparsely settled region in this cor- 

 ner of Brookline and West Roxbury. It is a 



