166 A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 



lonesome fields and the crumbling houses 

 would touch my imagination, and perhaps 

 chasten my spirit. Thither would I go, and 

 " consider the lilies." I am never much of 

 a literalist, except when a strict construc- 

 tion favors the argument, and in the 

 present instance it did not strike me as at 

 all essential that I should find any speci- 

 mens of the genus Lilium. One of the 

 humbler representatives of the great and 

 noble family of the Liliacew the pretty 

 clintonia, now a little out of season, or even 

 the Indian cucumber -root would come 

 fairly within the spirit of the text ; while, 

 if worst came to worst, there would cer- 

 tainly be no scarcity of grass, itself nothing 

 but a kind of degenerate lily, if some recent 

 theories may be trusted. 



I followed the highway for a mile or two, 

 and then took a wood-road (a " cart-path " I 

 should call it, if I dared to speak in my own 

 tongue wherein I was born) running into 

 the forest on the left. This brought me 

 before long to a " pair of bars," over which 

 I clambered into a grassy field, the first of 

 the two ancient clearings I had come out 

 to see. The scanty acres must have been 



