78 DYER'S HOLLOW. 



dicating an ostentatious spirit, ought rather 

 to be taken as a mark of humility. 



All things considered, I should hardly 

 choose to settle for life in Dyer's Hollow; 

 but with every recollection of the place I 

 somehow feel as if its score or two of inhab- 

 itants were favored above other men. Why 

 is it that people living thus by themselves, 

 and known thus transiently and from the 

 outside as it were, always seem in memory 

 like dwellers in some land of romance? I 

 cannot tell, but so it is; and whoever has 

 such a picture on the wall of his mind will 

 do well, perhaps, never to put the original 

 beside it. Yet I do not mean to speak quite 

 thus of Dyer's Hollow. Once more, at 

 least, I hope to walk the length of that strag- 

 gling road. As I think of it now, I behold 

 again those beds of shining bearberry ("re- 

 splendent" would be none too fine a word; 

 there is no plant for which the sunlight does 

 more), loaded with a wealth of handsome red 

 fruit. The beach-plum crop was a failure ; 

 plum wine, of the goodness of which I heard 

 enthusiastic reports, would be scarce; but 

 one needed only to look at the bearberry 

 patches to perceive that Cape Cod sand was 



