124 The Turnpike Road. 



old weathered building, or hay stack, where you may eat 

 your sandwich, and look out over the meadows with their 

 silver streak of a kill, for where the Turnpike road runs on 

 the crest of Long Neck, there is a wide and uninterrupted 

 view. The far away houses, the stacks of hay, the light 

 and dark spots caused by passing clouds, the lines of trees 

 running down to the meadow edge, and the lone cedars, 

 sycamores and apple trees, twisted by the wind, are all 

 interesting. There is no colder place in Winter than these 

 same salt meadows, for the north wind has an uninterrupted 

 sweep across them, and every little grass stem seems to 

 wave it on. " All grass is dead now," says the wind, " and 

 I have no heart, let all things freeze on the meadow 

 to-day." 



We are in truth, as much of nature as the grass on the 

 meadows, or the hardy little mice and the song-sparrows 

 along its edge, and so we ought to congratulate ourselves, 

 include our own persons in the praise that we bestow upon 

 them for their endurance. 



These same song-sparrows should put our occasional 

 unhappiness to shame. They have not only a living to 

 gain, but they are beset by powerful enemies; a hawk, 

 that pruner of the avian world, must needs catch some of 

 them sooner or later. The early colonists, who expected 

 Indians behind the tree-trunks, lived in much the same 

 trepidation. 



The tightly-stretched telegraph wires, along the road, 

 are played by the wind ; the passing breeze is turned to 

 music, and speeds you on your way. To the ear placed 

 on the pole it hums peculiarly, as if far away beyond the 



