WINTER SUNSHINE 15 



yourself return fairly mesmerized by the beauty of 

 the scene. 



Or you can bend your steps eastward over the 

 Eastern Branch, up Good Hope Hill, and on till 

 you strike the Marlborough pike, as a trio of us did 

 that cold February Sunday we walked from Wash- 

 ington to Pumpkintown and back. 



A short sketch of this pilgrimage is a fair sample 

 of these winter walks. 



The delight I experienced in making this new 

 acquisition to my geography was of itself sufficient 

 to atone for any aches or weariness I may have felt. 

 The mere fact that one may walk from Washington 

 to Pumpkintown was a discovery I had been all 

 these years in making. I had walked to Sligo, and 

 to the Northwest Branch, and had made the Falls 

 of the Potomac in a circuitous route of ten miles, 

 coming suddenly upon the river in one of its wildest 

 passes ; but I little dreamed all the while that there, 

 in a wrinkle (or shall I say furrow ?) of the Mary- 

 land hills, almost visible from the outlook of the 

 bronze squaw on the dome of the Capitol, and just 

 around the head of Oxen E,un, lay Pumpkintown. 



The day was cold but the sun was bright, and 

 the foot took hold of those hard, dry, gritty Mary- 

 land roads with the keenest relish. How the leaves 

 of the laurel glistened! The distant oak woods 

 Buggested gray-blue smoke, while the recesses of the 

 pines looked like the lair of Night. Beyond the 

 District limits we struck the Marlborough pike, 

 which, round and hard and white, held squarely to 



