GOD'S FIRST TEMPLES 65 



country life had fullest sway. In early spring its borders were 

 yellowed by the spice bush, and in the fall the bloom of the yellow 

 witch hazel brightened and the stag-horned sumach reddened each 

 rocky weed-grown hillock. Occasionally some city friend of pro- 

 nounced sylvan tastes camped out in one of the three or four shacks 

 that bespoke man's effort to people the wilderness of thorn, thicket, 

 and wild frost grape that in wanton growth crowded the narrow way. 

 Another world was the back lane and a stroll through it part of 

 our Sunday program both summer and winter. 



God's First Temples. 



On a rising knoll centreing our biggest hillside grew a double 

 score of majestic swaying pines instancing again and again that "the 

 groves were God's first temples." 



OUR ICE FIELD OUT OF COMMISSION. 



Our Woodland Paradise. 



It's but two miles 'cross country to the wood lot, for what farm 

 is worthy the name without such a lot? Its approach is through 

 a rutty, scratch-gravel, rocky, brier-grown wood or ox-road, a right 

 of way across a farmer's cow-yard and someone's pasture. But 

 the wood lot stands for a blazing fire of birch, chestnut, hickory and 

 maple, while its fauna was a continual surprise. It was a woodland 

 paradise for partridges, woodcocks, gray squirrels, and rabbits galore. 

 Its glades never echoed to a rifle shot, nor was the steel trap and 

 wire or horse hair snare of the farmer boy ever allowed within its 

 forty acres surrounded by a poacher-proof, ten foot high, gal- 

 vanized wire fence, of close weave at the bottom and arched outward 

 at the top. 



