UNDER THE MAPLES 



the sunshine, how much more attractive life will be! 

 Our very minds ought to be cleaner. We may 

 never hitch our wagons to the stars, but we can 

 hitch them to the mountain streams, and make 

 the summer breezes lift our burdens. Then the 

 silver age will displace the iron age. 



The western end of Pennsylvania is one vasz; 

 coal-mine. The farmer has only to dig into the 

 side of the hill back of his house and take out his 

 winter's fuel. I was surprised to see how smooth 

 and gentle and grassy the hills looked. It is a 

 cemetery of the old carboniferous gods, and it 

 seems to have been prepared by gentle hands and 

 watched over with kindly care. Good crops of hay 

 and grain were growing above their black remains, 

 and rural life seemed to go on in the usual way. 

 The shuffling and the deformation of the earth's 

 surface which attended the laying down of the 

 coal-beds is not anywhere evident. The hand of 

 that wonderful husbandman. Father Time, has 

 smoothed it all out. 



Our first camp was at Greensborough, thirty or 

 more miles southeast of Pittsburgh, an ideal place 

 — a large, open oak grove on a gentle eminence well 

 carpeted with grass, with wood and water in 

 abundance. But the night was chilly. Folding 

 camp-cots are poor conservers of one's bodily 

 warmth, and until you get the hang of them and 

 equip yourself with plenty of blankets, Sleep enters 



112 



