224 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
at last, and perhaps see the showers come up 
the Connecticut till they patter on the leaves 
beneath you, and then, swerving, pass up the 
black ravine and leave you unwet. Or of those 
among the White Mountains, gorgeous with 
great red lilies which presently seem to take 
flight in a cloud of butterflies that match their 
tints, paths where the balsamic air caresses you 
in light breezes, and masses of alderberries rise 
above the waving ferns. Or of the paths that 
lead beside many a little New England stream, 
whose bank is lost to sight in a smooth green 
slope of grapevine: the lower shoots rest upon 
the quiet water, but the upper masses are 
crowned by a white wreath of alder blooms; 
beside them grow great masses of wild roses, 
and the simultaneous blossoms and berries of 
the gaudy nightshade. Or of those winding 
tracks that lead here and there among the flat 
stones of peaceful old graveyards, so entwined 
with grass and flowers that every spray of 
sweetbrier seems to tell more of life than all 
the accumulated epitaphs can tell of death. 
And when the paths that one has personally 
traversed are exhausted, memory holds almost 
as clearly those which the poets have trodden 
for us, —those innumerable byways of Shake- 
speare, each more real than any high-road in 
England ; or Chaucer’s 
