COUNTRY ROADS IN AUGUST 



a country road, because it is free 

 as the air, or as navigable waters, to all of 

 us. You may wander along it all day, with 

 no danger of being confronted by a tres 

 pass sign, or ordered out of the grass by 

 an irate farmer. It is everybody's manor, 

 everybody's shrubbery and aviary better 

 than the fields, too, for plants and birds, 

 because free to them in the same sense that 

 it is free to the rambler and the gipsy. The 

 wild growths of the fields creep under the 

 fences into the country roads for protection 

 from the plow, the scythe, and the hoe. 

 There they are safe, like helpless women 

 and children who have fled from massacre 

 to the walls of a bristling town. 



In August especially the luxuriance and 

 tangled beauty of the country road afford 

 a striking and grateful contrast to the 

 shorn desolation or nibbled barrenness of 

 the meadows and pastures on either side. 

 All the native plants, sheltered and un- 

 116 



