WINDING ROADS 317 



bath. Tracks of crows and squirrels on the dust or on the 

 mud after a rain may tell of their coming and going. 



But if there be neither man nor beast nor bird in evidence, 

 there are many other things that make the roadside interest- 

 ing, and not the least of these is the succession of pictures that 

 every turn discloses. 



Here we pass a few panels of old fence draped with Virginia 

 creeper, and backed up by spreading hawthorns and sprightly 

 chokecherries. The clay bank at its foot is overspread with 

 a mixed carpet of grasses and mosses and cinquefoil and 

 mouse-ear. A long purple raspberry cane reaches through 

 the panel, and near it are a coarse pink-topped teasel and a 

 blue aster. Nobody planted these so: nobody figured out 

 their times and seasons, their harmonies of color and form, 

 their requirements of light and moisture,. They slipped in 

 unawares, each finding its own place, and proceeded to cover 

 a clay bank and a bare fence with loveliness. Yonder, where 

 a carelessly set fire has laid bare a little strip, one may see by 

 the contrasting ugliness what beauty they have wrought. 



On the other side are trees. ' Their boughs are thick and 

 bushy, and heavy with leafage. Long years have passed 

 since the road was cut through, giving full exposure to the sun, 

 and the trees have robed themselves with heavy foliage 

 masses coming down to the ground. They are full-fledged. 

 Ahead, we see their gracefully rounded outlines and their 

 colors, and near at hand the dainty sculpturings and textures 

 of their leaves come into view. Yonder is a dark, shadowy 

 glade with a canopy of overarching birch tops above, and 

 with slender horizontal sprays of leaves of maple extended 

 beneath as though they were floating in the air. Below we 

 catch a gleam from the surface of a dark pool. 



Now we come to a steeply rising bank, which doubtless was 

 once bare — long since, when graders had finished their work. 

 But nature had some wild roses and asters growing on the 



