SUMMER. 73 



way through a sombre glen. Presently we catch glimpses of the great 

 rumbling factory, with its clouds of smoke and steam melting into the 

 wooded mountain above. The old yellow bridge now creaks under our 

 approach, and ere we are aware a sudden turn leads us out of a wilder- 

 ness on to the shore of the beautiful Housatonic. For a few minutes 

 the rushing water trickles through the wheels as over jolting stones our 

 pony leads us through the ford, and, refreshed by the cool bath, makes a 

 lively sally up the eastern bank. For ten miles the Housatonic guides 

 us around its winding curves through a path of ever-changing beauty, 

 now shut in by the dense, dark evergreens, and again emerging into 

 a bower of silvery beeches, where the roadway is carpeted with mottled 

 shadows, and the dappled trunks flicker with the softened glints of sun- 

 light. Here we come upon a sandy stretch where the road is sunken 

 between two sloping banks thick-set with mulleins and sweet-fern, and 

 overrun with creeping brambles. The stone -wall above is wreathed in 

 trailing woodbine, and along its crest we see the swaying tips of wheat 

 from the edge of the field just beyond ; and here we pass a border of 

 whortleberry bushes, laden with their fruit. Now it is a hazel thicket 

 crowding close upon our wheels, and among the leaves we see the brown, 

 tanned husks of the ripening nuts, almost ready for that troop of boys and 

 girls that you may be sure are watching and waiting for them. 



The old gray toll-bridge soon nears to view, with its two long spans 

 and fantastic beams. Farther on, peering from its willows, stands the 

 ruined cider-mill, with its long moss-grown lever jutting through the 

 trees — an old-time haunt, now crumbling in decay. But we only catch a 

 glimpse of it, for in a moment more we are shut in beneath another 

 bower of beeches and white birches, where the road takes a steep ascent, 

 and the rippling river sends up its sunny reflections among the leaves 

 and tree -trunks. When once more upon a level, it is to look ahead 

 through a long avenue of shade — a leafy canopy two miles in length — 

 with only an occasional break to open up some charming bit of landscape 

 across the water. In these two miles of umbrage you may see types of 

 almost every tree that grows within the boundaries of New England. 

 Old veteran beeches are here, their trunks disfigured with scars that once 

 were names cut in the bark. Here are spots that look like half obliter- 

 ated figures; and here are spreading hieroglyphs that tell, perhaps, of old- 

 time vows plighted at the trysting-tree ; and here's a semblance of a heart, 

 a broken heart indeed, if its present form be taken as a prophetic symbol. 



