276 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



posed ledge, to fight the north winds bravely till it 

 leans a bit to their buffets, its longer branches 

 streaming southward, its northern side sheared off 

 by the storms, the very picture of triumphant, if 

 battered, pugnacity. How such an old pine befits 

 a mountainous landscape, a place of rocks and 

 windy sweeps ! How much more seemly and beau- 

 tiful it is for true landscape gardening in a ledgy land 

 than all the flower-beds and clumps of hydrangeas 

 you could plant ! The grouped pines, too, with their 

 predominant effect of columned architecture, with 

 their dagger stabs of sunset light between the trunks 

 or little upright canvases glimpsed through cool 

 shadow, make one of the most splendid garden 

 screens in all the world. I well recall a certain pine 

 grove in our country which is on the farther side of 

 an orchard, the apple-trees growing right up to the 

 edge. In winter the contrast between the lower, 

 irregular apple-trees, their lines picked out with 

 snow, and the green pines is charming, and in May, 

 when they are bouquets of pink and white bloom, 

 you would go far to see them. The edge of a pine 

 stand is ever a fascinating thing, indeed, for a cer- 

 tain mystery invites from the perpetual seashell 

 murmur, the cool shadows, the columnar aisles. 

 When in winter the snow washes up to the feet of 

 the pines, like surf, and through it the fringe of 

 shrubs and dead goldenrod and other weed-tops 

 makes a fairy tracery of blown, curling spray, 

 some white path into the quietude invites your 

 feet as nothing else, and peace like a benediction 

 seems to fall with the seashell murmur from 

 above, or the soft, tiny tinkle of needles broken 



