194 LAXD OF THE LINGERING KNOW. 



by suggestion than by disclosure. Eastward 

 and southward, where the smoke lay heaviest, 

 the land seemed flat. Most of it was free from 

 forest, but every few miles a dark line or spot 

 told of a grove of pines saved thus far from the 

 destroying hand of this generation of timber 

 thieves. A few lakes caught the light of the 

 sky and flashed it back to us, and scattered 

 houses, usually white, broke the monotony of 

 green fields and pastures. Marlborough on the 

 east, Worcester on the south, Gardner on the 

 west, and Fitchburg on the north were nuclei 

 of houses, reminding me of the piles of sand 

 which form themselves on a pane of sanded glass 

 when a violin bow is drawn across its edge. 

 Far away in the smoke on the western horizon 

 rose the Berkshire Hills with proud Greylock 

 dominant over them. I thought of the fair 

 Connecticut flowing southward between them 

 and us, and of the bright Hudson rolling be- 

 yond them on its journey toward the modern 

 Babylon. Northward of the Berkshires the sky 

 line was ragged with hills and distant mountains 

 in Vermont and New Hampshire, even to the 

 point where, rising serenely from its granite 

 bed, Monadnock reared its noble head toward 

 the heavens. It alone in all that smoky land- 

 scape was majestic. All else was soft, yielding, 

 sleepy, but Monadnock rose with clear-cut out- 



