28 WINTER SUNSHINE. 



charming wood-path a regular little tunnel through 

 the dense pines, carpeted with silence, and allowing 

 us to look nearly the whole length of it through its 

 soft green twilight out into the open sunshine of the 

 fields beyond. A pine wood in Maryland or in Vir- 

 ginia is quite a different thing from a pine wood in 

 Maine or Minnesota the difference, in fact, be- 

 tween yellow pine and white. The former, as it 

 grows hereabout, is short and scrubby, with branches 

 nearly to the ground, and looks like the dwindling 

 remnant of a greater race. 



Beyond the woods, the path led us by a colored 

 man's habitation a little, low frame house, on a 

 knoll, surrounded by the quaint devices and rude 

 makeshifts of these quaint and rude people. A few 

 poles stuck in the ground, clapboarded with cedar- 

 boughs and corn-stalks, and supporting a roof of the 

 same, gave shelter to a rickety one-horse wagon and 

 some farm implements. Near this there was a large, 

 compact tent, made entirely of corn-stalks, with, for 

 door, a bundle of the same, in the dry, warm, nest- 

 like interior of which the husking of the corn crop 

 seemed to have taken place. A few rods farther on, 

 we passed through another humble door-yard, musi- 

 cal with dogs and dusky with children. We crossed 

 here the outlying fields of a large, thrifty, well-kept- 

 looking farm with a showy, highly ornamental frame 

 house in the centre. There was even a park with 

 deer, and among the gayly painted out-buildings I 

 noticed a fancy dove-cot, with an immense flock of 



