254 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



Yet I sometimes think the elm is never so lovely as 

 when it grows along the river bends, where Nature 

 planted it. We all know such river bends, every Amer- 

 ican cherishes in memory the picture of a green inter- 

 vale, of browsing cattle, of a winding stream with 

 vervain and wild cucumber on the banks, and now and 

 then, rising like graceful green fountains or like great 

 Vases on slender stems, the noble elms the wardens 

 oB the peaceful landscape. The valley of the Housa- 

 tonic, in the Berkshire Hills, is peculiarly rich, per- 

 haps, in splendid trees of many kinds, especially wil- 

 lows. Yet its elms stand out with a certain aristo- 

 cratic aloofness, and demand, or rather compel, the 

 chief attention. Over the well-kept village streets 

 they spread magnificently, with the spring of a Gothic 

 arch in their massive limbs, and oriole nests depend 

 like tiny platinum ear-drops from the outer twigs. 

 But along the river you see the whole tree, you are not 

 conscious of it as the underside of an arch but rather 

 as a complete and beautiful design, a mammoth vase 

 rising on its graceful stem from the emerald meadows. 

 There are five such elms in a row near my home. They 

 grow along the bank of a swale close to the river, with 

 space enough between them so that each tree has 

 reached its standard of form, and yet each, too, has 

 conceded a little something to its neighbour and made 

 up for the loss by a fringe of foliage close around the 

 trunk, as well-fed elms sometimes do. They are of 



