LUNCH BY THE BROOKSIDE. 



" AND this our life, exempt from public haunts, 

 Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 

 Sermons in stones, and good in everything." SHAKESPEARE. 



AT a distance of more than a mile in the 

 Molega Road is the crossing of a small 

 brook on a pole bridge. At this point the stream, 

 about a rod in width, is gently running over a 

 gravel bed, and half hiding in the bushes as it 

 makes its way to the river, nearly a mile away. 

 For a small part of that distance it tumbles along 

 the margin of a neglected field, and then dives 

 into the primeval forests of birch, oaks, hemlocks 

 and firs, carpeted with mosses and hung with 

 lichens. 



Reaching the edge of the wood before it does 

 the river it leaves the shadows, and with many 

 a turn and twist, through a stretch of meadow, 

 where the hardbacks and the polypods fringe its 

 banks, and the herons hide, and bittens boom, it 

 joins at last " the brimming river. " Slyly glid- 

 ing behind a little hemlock islet it there mingles 

 its waters with the greater stream. 



