THe Lay of tHe Land 
small the patch of water! and the two persimmon 
trees? The bush and undergrowth had grown these 
twenty years. Which way— Ah, there they stand, 
only their leafless tops showing; but see the hard 
angular limbs, how closely globed with fruit! how 
softly etched upon the sky! 
I hurried around to the trees and climbed the one 
with the two broken branches, up, clear up to the 
top, into the thick of the persimmons. 
Did I say it had been twenty years? That could 
not be. Twenty years would have made me a man, 
and this sweet, real taste in my mouth only a doy 
could know. But there was college, and marriage, a 
Massachusetts farm, four boys of my own, and —no 
matter! it could not have been years —twenty years 
—since. It was only yesterday that I last climbed this 
tree and ate the rich rimy fruit frosted with a Christ- 
mas snow. 
And yet, could it have been yesterday? It was 
storming, and I clung here in the swirling snow and 
heard the wild ducks go over in their hurry toward 
the bay. Yesterday, and all this change in the vast 
treetop world, this huddled pond, those narrowed 
meadows, that shrunken creek! I should have eaten 
22 
