126 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



surrounding marshes. Leisure, peace, and an 

 assured prosperity seem to mark the one as well as 

 the other, whether ships come or go. There is 

 little bustle, even at its busiest points, and you 

 have but to go a little way from these to find as 

 sweet a country as any part of New England has 

 to offer. Passing up the river bank where the 

 marsh grasses grow over the rotting stocks of the 

 old shipyards, you find the hills coming down to 

 meet the marshes and mingling with them in 

 friendly converse. The town drops behind you, 

 and gentle hillocks offer kindly asylum on the 

 placid levels of the river bank, beauty spots full of 

 half-wild life. 



Here and there on these is an apple tree that has 

 strolled down from suburban orchards as if to 

 view the beauty of the river, and liked the place so 

 well that it stayed, glad to escape the humdrum of 

 ordered life, sending out wild shoots at will and 

 producing fruit that has a half-wild vigor of 

 flavor that puts the orchard apples to shame for 

 their insipidity. They riot in lawless growth, 

 these runaway trees, and welcome their boon com- 

 panions, crows and jays, spreading an autumnal 



