Winter Woodsmen Around Boston 



and looking up at the evening star, as they 

 might have watched it over the shoulder of 

 Katahdin, or where the moon strikes white 

 on the great bare bluff of Monadnock. 



There is something peculiarly grateful, to 

 a lover of nature and the country, in these 

 survivals of the primitive and rural under 

 the very eaves of great cities. It is a re- 

 freshing evidence of the persistency and 

 fecundity of nature. After all, the thor- 

 oughly artificial man, with his refinements 

 and elaborate appurtenances, seems only an 

 interloper. The country still ostracizes the 

 city, and seems ever on the point of oust- 

 ing it altogether, and taking complete pos- 

 session of the land again. A little way from 

 the close-packed suburban houses, the 

 birches and oaks are rapidly covering the 

 gashed knolls, and overshadowing the un- 

 inhabited "avenues" laid out by premature 

 speculators in real estate. Who knows but, 

 in a few years, there will be some profitable 

 lumbering done in Roxbury and Dorchester 

 and Somerville, as now in Jamaica Plain 

 and Quincy? Perhaps the sound of the 

 ax may again penetrate to the Statehouse 

 223 



