VI 



FOOTPATHS 



A N intelligent English woman, spending a few 

 -^^- years in this country with her family, says 

 that one of her serious disappointments is that she 

 finds it utterly impossible to enjoy nature here as 

 she can at home — so much nature as we have and 

 yet no way of getting at it; no paths, or byways, 

 or stiles, or foot-bridges, no provision for the pedes- 

 trian outside of the public road. One would think 

 the people had no feet and legs in this country, or 

 else did not know how to use them. Last summer 

 she spent the season near a small rural village in 

 the valley of the Connecticut, but it seemed as if 

 she had not been in the country: she could not 

 come at the landscape ; she could not reach a wood 

 or a hill or a pretty nook anywhere without being 

 a trespasser, or getting entangled in swamps or in 

 fields of grass and grain, or having her course 

 blocked by a high and difficult fence; no private 

 ways, no grassy lanes; nobody walking in the fields 

 or woods, nobody walking anywhere for pleasure, 

 but everybody in carriages or wagons. 



She was stopping a mile from the village, and 

 every day used to walk down to the post-office for 



