©ur Berfesbire. 9 



foliage ablaze, and the hillsides glow and flicker and 

 flame through the haze of October, the happy souls 

 who are permitted to linger or live where they can 

 look upon it all, are filled with fresh wonder that one 

 small county can so vary and renew its charm and 

 be always in its best season. 



Our Berkshire has another peculiarity all its own. 

 It has a triune existence. It is three counties in one ; 

 and he who knows the one county may have little 

 or no knowledge of the other two. There is the 

 commercial Berkshire, the Berkshire of the farmer 

 and the manufacturer and the merchant and, perhaps 

 one ought to add, the hotel-keeper. And this is a 

 county important and impressive. These smooth 

 meadows, these uplands and vales, are not mere 

 lawns, kept trim and neat for the benefit of visitors 

 and idlers by the way. They bear real harvests. 

 They yield a revenue to the purses of their owners. 

 These busy brooks are broken to harness and forced 

 to furnish power and privileges to clanging mills. 

 There is an industrial Berkshire built on the ruins 

 of two or three earlier periods, bearing lively witness 

 to the thrift, the energy, the courage of the business 

 men of this county. And he who comes to see this 

 Berkshire may know nothing at all of the other two. 



For the social Berkshire which has become so fa- 

 mous in late years is a world by itself. It migrates from 

 the cities in the spring, and it flies southward when 

 the leaves fall and the frosts bite, just as the birds do 

 in the forests round about Lenox and Stockbridge 



