156 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



bridge, or crosses the green fields of the intervale, is 

 white with dust and lined with bramble-covered stone 

 walls and elm trees or maples. Always, as it draws 

 near, it runs up a little incline to the bridge (perhaps 

 just after you have paid your toll at the toll gate); 

 and warned by a large sign over the entrance you pull 

 your horses down to a walk or reduce the speed of your 

 motor. You pass at once out of the hot sunshine into 

 the dusty dimness of the long, telescope-like shed, and 

 the planks rumble beneath your wheels. What a 

 curious smell there is in the old covered bridge! It is 

 like no other smell in the world, and quite indescribable 

 to one who has never sniffed it not the smell of a coun- 

 try barn, nor of a circus ring, yet reminiscent of both, 

 with a new quality entirely its own. It always brings 

 back my childhood to me with a sudden, startling 

 vividness, and I recall the covered bridge across the 

 Androscoggin at Bethel, with ancient circus posters 

 flaring from the dusty walls, with tin placards on every 

 beam proclaiming some magic spavin cure, with bits of 

 hay hanging from the cobwebs, pulled from a tower- 

 ing load recently passed through, and finally with 

 exquisite landscapes of the great curve of the river, the 

 green fields, and the far blue peaks of the Presidentials, 

 framed through the square windows for every cov- 

 ered bridge is lighted by square windows at orthodox 

 intervals. The road on either side of that bridge is 

 as vague in my memory as yesterday's breakfast; but 



