25G GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



fragrant white blossoms not unlike the Japanese wis- 

 taria, later conspicuous for their curiously sparse and 

 delicate foliage, and, best of all, in Winter showing in 

 stark outline the most bewildering forks and twists 

 and angles of growth, yet not a limb of them which, 

 for all its irregularity, has not a splendid force and 

 rugged picturesqueness. Those tough, jabbing branches 

 bespeak the tough fibre of the wood. Perhaps only 

 the man who has been forced to tackle a dead locust 

 with an axe can truly appreciate this tree. I cannot 

 say why some childish and now forgotten association, 

 no doubt but a gray, aged locust always reminds me 

 of Ulysses after his years of wanderings, and never 

 more so than in Winter when the limbs are nude and 

 the joints seem twisted as if with conflict. 



Against an evening sky, indeed, almost any bare 

 tree takes on a strange mystery and charm. Where 

 the still brook gleams like quicksilver in the grass and 

 the gathering night seems to exhale from the under- 

 growth, the ash trees and other sentinels on some old 

 fence line stand up to the fading west with every 

 branch and twig distinct and black, making a lacy 

 pattern of infinite intricacy, which for all its trans- 

 parency seems somehow to imprison a little of the 

 rising twilight. I remember once tramping north 

 from Cambridge, in those youthful days when one 

 wandered cross-country with his boon companion and 

 settled all the problems of the universe; and presently, 



