LEAF AND BRANCH 



266 



the Eastern tangle of wild cherry, hickory, and 

 beech, have little resemblance one to another. 

 And those long aisles and open spaces in the 

 forest of oak and chestnut spaces where the 

 sunlight breaks through in splashes, where the 

 creeper grows and the cardinal flower gleams 

 what a contrast they are to the dark depths of 

 the "pinery," where the closed-up ranks of the 

 trees shut out the light of the sun, where the 

 long moss hangs in festoons from the branches, 

 and only stray patches of the lowly pink peer 

 through the carpet of pine-needles ! 



But deep forest and dark pinery are hardly 

 attractive to the average person. People have 

 some fear of the shadow and the solitude, and 

 quickly wish themselves back in the sunshine 

 with friends. They prefer the more open 

 groves, where the light breaks in flickering 

 bars across the wood-road, where the field of 

 golden-rod is in sight, and the blue sky is not 

 shut out. Certainly the open woods are the 

 most enjoyable, the most livable spots; yet 

 those great interlaced forests where light filters 

 through only in arrowy shafts, where the bear 

 and the wolf slink like spectres and the deer 

 breaks suddenly from his bed those labyrinths 

 through which stretches no Daedalian thread 



