154 VIRGINIA 



was one of the first things I noticed, the 

 sloping ground covered with large, round, 

 shiny, purplish-green (evergreen) leaves, aU 

 exquisitely crinkled and toothed. With no- 

 thing but the leaves to depend upon, I could 

 only conjecture the plant to be galax, a 

 name which caught my eye by the sheerest 

 accident, as I turned the pages of the Man- 

 ual looking for something else ; but the con- 

 jecture turned out to be a sound one, as the 

 sagacious reader will have already inferred 

 from the fact of its mention. 



In such a place there was no taking many 

 steps without a halt. My gait was rather a 

 progressive standing still than an actual 

 progress ; so that it mattered little whither 

 or how far the path might carry me. I 

 was not going somewhere, — I was already 

 there ; or rather, I was both at once. 

 Every stroller will know what I mean. Fru- 

 ition and expectation were on my tongue 

 together; to risk an unscriptural paradox, 

 what I saw I yet hoped for. The brook, 

 tumbling noisily downward, — in some 

 places over almost regular flights of stone 

 steps, — now in broad sunshine, now in the 

 shade of pines and hemlocks and rhododen- 



