CHAPTER VIII 
IN THE LAKE COUNTRY 
HE charm of this Lake Country of West- 
ern New York is pre-eminently pastoral, 
and, unlike New England pastoral country, it 
does not give the impression of having been 
wrested from Nature, for it has none of 
that austerity which belongs to the boulders 
and junipers and is naturally hospitable and 
adapted for man. It smiles upon him first in 
the peach blossoms and the pear and in the 
flowering apple orchards; again in the golden 
wheat and later in the mellow cornfields where 
the pumpkins glisten in the sun, and it smiles 
upon him in the vineyards with their purple 
and amber clusters. 
One is prone here to assume a bucolic and 
pastoral view of life. It is not the wild, but a 
hospitable, generous, and admirably tamed 
Nature to which we are kin. We know the 
flavour of grapes on the vine; we have an eye 
for apple trees and rye-fields, and some of our 
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