A NEW ENGLAND WOODPILE 



trees in his woodlot, leaving saplings 

 and thrifty old trees to " stand up and 

 grow better," as the Yankee saying is. 



There is a prosperous and hospitable 

 look in a great woodpile at a farmhouse 

 door. Logs with the moss of a hundred 

 years on them, breathing the odors of the 

 woods, have come to warm the inmates 

 and all in-comers. The white smoke of 

 these chimneys is spicy with the smell 

 of seasoned hard wood, and has a savor of 

 roasts and stews that makes one hungry. 

 If you take the back track on a trail of 

 pitchy smoke, it is sure to lead you to 

 a squalid threshold with its starved heap 

 of pine roots and half -decayed wood. 

 Thrown down carelessly beside it is a 

 dull axe, wielded as need requires with 

 spiteful awkwardness by a slatternly wo- 

 man, or laboriously upheaved and let fall 

 with uncertain stroke by a small boy. 



The Yankees who possess happy mem- 

 ories of the great open fires of old time 

 are growing few, but Whittier has em- 

 balmed for all time, in " Snow-Bound," 

 their comfort and cheer and picturesque- 

 ness. When the trees of the virgin forest 

 cast their shadows on the newly risen roof 

 240 



