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 
