292 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



hard toil, the harder the larger the trees and the 

 heavier your ax. Hard toil, however, is just what 

 you want on a frosty winter morning, and the rhyth- 

 mic swing of a four-pound ax, when once you have 

 mastered the knack, and your muscles and wind 

 have grown to the proper stature of endurance, is 

 among the glorious physical sensations, no less de- 

 lectable and to be savored with endless relish than 

 the soft sensations of cool water on a hot day, or 

 the sharp caresses of desire, or the swing of a well- 

 balanced brassy. 



My pasture springs abruptly from the highway 

 right up the mountain-side, so that you pant to climb 

 it, and only the most skilful hazard a descent on 

 skees. At the top of this pasture are several naked 

 outcroppings of the underlying limestone, on which 

 you turn and survey the world, amazed that in so 

 brief a walk from the house you have suddenly risen 

 so far above it. The farm, the neighboring farms, 

 lie spread out like a map, the village spires three 

 miles away prick the plain; to south and east, in 

 the far distance, lie the long, wave-crest horizontals 

 of the opposite hills, while to the north more abrupt 

 individualized mountains are huddled picturesquely 

 — Tom Ball, West Stockbridge, Monument (with 

 its white cliffs), and others more remote. Only to 

 the west is there no look-off. Here the pasture 

 ends against a wall of woods, and the mountain- 

 side, growing ever steeper, climbs on up another 

 thousand feet. 



It is this wooded wall directly at the head of my 

 pasture that I am attacking with my ax, and shall 

 be for some winters to come. Above are acres upon 



