BRIDGES 159 



There are many such wooden bridges still left on back 

 roads where motor traffic has not necessitated a change. 

 Often they are as picturesque, almost, as a consciously 

 designed bridge in Japan, with an artless grace in the 

 rough, semicircular arch occasionally constructed with 

 the pole railing, or the angular curve of the base line 

 over a mid-stream prop. If you go down to the river 

 level in winter, when the banks are white with snow, 

 and only in the centre of the current is there any water 

 visible, when the bare trees are sharp and delicate 

 against the sky and the road but three tracks of blue 

 shadow, you will see the bridge etched in timber on a 

 field of white, with naive, unconscious picturesqueness, 

 almost as much a part of nature as the nude maples 

 beyond. 



On the farther side of Grandfather's house was a 

 second bridge, crossing the same river which me- 

 andered in great loops through the meadows, going a 

 mile while the road went three hundred yards. This 

 was called the Red Bridge. It was much more pre- 

 tentious, but far less attractive to the eye, than the 

 first one. The sides, instead of being open railing, were 

 composed of double solid board fences, two feet apart, 

 and boxed in along the top. Unless you were a very 

 tall man, you could not look over them, so that when 

 you stood on this bridge you didn't see the river at all. 

 But you could climb up on them! On top was a two- 

 foot-wide, perilous path, with a sheer drop of twenty 



