7° 



PASTORAL DAYS. 



enjoyed one week of glorious loafing, but work was the programme for 

 the next. I went to Draper's Inn and engaged a horse and buggy " until 

 further notice." " A spang-up team " he called it, and it would be up " in 

 half a jiffy." We were waiting for it when it came, and what with our 

 variety of luggage in the shape of canvases, color-boxes, hammocks, camp- 

 seats, and easels, every bit of available space in that buggy was well util- 

 ized. Before the clock has struck nine, we are spinning along down 

 through the village, now past the store, now over the bridge, and turning 

 to the right, we glide by the little post-office, as the kind face of Father 



Tomlinson nods a 

 " good-bye " from the 

 door-way. 



A little farther, and 

 we have left the little 

 slope- roofed school- 

 house in our path, and 

 are soon ascending the 

 Ions: hill of Zoar, from 

 which we look back 

 four miles to the cliff 

 and nestling town. In 

 lutes more we approach the 

 brow of a steep declivity, and the 

 broad Housatonic opens up to view, 

 winding off into the misty mountains in 

 the distance. There is now a drive of 

 half a mile along the side of a wild moun- 

 tain-slope, where mountain-laurels grow in 

 wild profusion, and the rooty, overhanging 

 banks are tufted with rich green moss, overgrown with checker-berries 

 and arbutus. The river roars far down below us, and for a few minutes 

 our eyes feast on as lovely an extent of varied New England landscape 

 as is easily found. And yet this is only a short section of one of the 

 many matchless drives that follow the course of this beautiful river 

 around the borders of Hometown. 



Suddenly we leave the stream as it glides away on an abrupt turn 

 beneath the crescent of a rocky precipice, and before we have fairly lost 

 the sound of the ripples we have arrived at our journey's end. A pair of 



FAMILIAR FACES AT THE VILLAGE 

 STORE. 



