1 88 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



ness. But the old woods, the woods of the Indian and 

 early settler, has nearly all of it gone its way with the 

 pioneer and trapper and the former life of years ago, 

 the rugged life of the hunter and rail-splitter in the 

 days of solid homespun clothes. New conditions have 

 confronted us, and we must meet them. The trees 

 have ripened, and it is for our interest and that of 

 others that they should fulfill their intended usefulness 

 as lumber before decay renders the wood unfit. Some 

 of the old oaks, as I have said, were over three hundred 

 years of age. It was time they went. They have 

 helped us by their beauty and shade, and it is not a 

 profanation to have them go, but they fall rather in 

 the fullness of their maturity, as veritable patriarchs of 

 the forest. 



And then, too, the view that we have, now that 

 part of it has been cut away, is so restful and beautiful 

 that we think that perhaps, after all, it is really better 

 that the woods has partly been lumbered off. We can 

 see from the old homestead the lovely hills across the 

 Miami. It is like a pastoral. We could not see them 

 before; indeed, we hardly knew they were there. In 

 winter these hills present white fields bordered with 

 brush, seen through the old trees' penciled tops; in 

 spring these same sloping ridges become again fresh in 

 their green and purple and furrowed brown; in sum- 

 mer we can see the golden harvest and the reapers; 

 in autumn the many-colored hues of the fall of the leaf 

 beautify and once more vary the color of the landscape 

 and the strips of woodland : winter, and the snowy 

 covering. 



