58 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 



Shore, though at a point somewhat farther 

 inland, and in a town where I was not likely 

 to lose myself, least of all in any out-of- 

 the-way woodland road. In short, I spent 

 Christmas on my native heath, a not in- 

 appropriate word, by the bye, for a region 

 so largely grown up to huckleberry bushes. 

 "Holbrook's meadows," and "Norton pas- 

 ture! " the names are not to be found on 

 any map, and will convey no meaning to my 

 readers ; but in my ears they awaken mem- 

 ories of many and many a sunny hour. On 

 this holiday I revisited them both. Warm 

 as it was, boys and girls were skating on the 

 meadows (in spite of their name, these have 

 been nothing but a pond for as long as I 

 can remember), and I stood awhile by the 

 old Ross cellar, watching their evolutions. 

 How bright and cheery it was in the little 

 sheltered clearing, with nothing in sight but 

 the leafless woods and the ice-covered pond ! 

 "Shan't I take your coat? " the sun seemed 

 to be asking. At my elbow stood a bunch 

 of lilac bushes ("laylocks " they were prob- 

 ably called by the man who set them out J ) 



1 So they were called, too, by that lover of flowers, 

 Walter Savage Landor, who, as his biographer says, fol- 



