A WEEK ON WALDEN'S RIDGE. 137 



itself, why, it was always pretty down at 

 Falling Water Creek. There I saw the 

 rhododendrons come into exuberant bloom, 

 and there I oftenest see them in memory, 

 though I found them elsewhere in greater 

 abundance, and in a setting even more 

 romantic. 



More romantic, perhaps, but hardly more 

 beautiful. I remember, just beyond the 

 creek, a bank where sweet bush ( Calycan- 

 thus^, wild ginger (^AsaimTii), rhododendron, 

 laurel, and plenty of trailing arbutus (the 

 last now out of flower) were growing side 

 by side, — a rare combination of beauty 

 and fragrance. And within a few rods of 

 the same spot I sat down more than once to 

 take a long look at a cross-vine covering a 

 dead hemlock. The branches of the tree, 

 shortening regularly to the top, were draped 

 heavily with gray lichens, while the vine, 

 keeping mostly near the trunk and climbing 

 clean to the tip, — fifty feet or more, as I 

 thought, — was hung throughout with large, 

 orange-red, gold-lined bells. Their numbers 

 were past guessing. Here and there a 

 spray of them swung lightly from the end of 

 a branch, as if inviting the breeze to lend 



