DYER'S HOLLOW. 79 



not wanting in fertility after a manner of its 

 own. If its energies in the present instance 

 happened to be devoted to ornament rather 

 than utility, it was not for an untaxed and 

 disinterested outsider to make complaint; 

 least of all a man who was never a wine- 

 bibber, and who believes, or thinks he be- 

 lieves, in "art for art's sake." Within the 

 woods the ground was carpeted with trailing 

 arbutus and a profusion of checkerberry 

 vines, the latter yielding a few fat berries, 

 almost or quite a year old, but still sound 

 and spicy, still tasting "like tooth-powder," 

 as the benighted city boy expressed it. It 

 was an especial pleasure to eat them here in 

 Dyer's Hollow, I had so many times done 

 the same in another place, on the banks 

 of Dyer's Run. Lady's - slippers likewise 

 (nothing but leaves) looked homelike and 

 friendly, and the wild lily of the valley, too, 

 and the pipsissewa. Across the road from 

 the old house nearest the ocean stood a still 

 more ancient-seeming barn, long disused, to 

 all appearance, but with old maid's pinks, 

 catnip, and tall, stout pokeberry weeds yet 

 flourishing beside it. Old maid's pinks 

 and catnip ! Could that combination have 

 been fortuitous? 



