Where Town and Country Meet 



hills like a group of half-grown children. 

 The crisp autumn air invades our blood, 

 and the damp smell of alders and black loam 

 and decaying ferns refreshes the sense and 

 fills the mind with a thousand sweet asso 

 ciations of bygone days. A blue jay utters 

 his clear, metallic cry that characteristic 

 fall note and memories of boyish nutting 

 trips and squirrel hunts rush over us with a 

 longing sweetness that is almost pain. See, 

 there is the same old fence, zigzagging up 

 the hill, where we used to head off the 

 "grays" in their excursions from the sugar- 

 grove to the cornfield; and the gnarled oak 

 is still standing, half-way up the slope, 

 around which we wound such circles of ex 

 citement, as with aching necks we peered 

 for some sign of the frightened squirrel 

 curled in a bunch among the topmost leaves. 

 There ! do you hear the rattling roar of the 

 old musket, as it hurls a handful of shot 

 through the tree-tops ? We Ve hit him ! 

 and down he comes, clinging and bumping, 

 to strike the hard pasture turf with a thud 

 dead as a stone. 



Above the lonely farms the way to Joe's 

 Pond becomes a logging-road, rough with 

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