304 



IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



loveliest part of the whole great etching which is 

 the visible world to-day. The weed-tops above the 

 snow! To the farmer, at least, they are weeds. 

 Some of them are the ghosts of our fairest flowers. 



Dried now to a russet 

 or straw - brown, in 

 some lights almost an 

 old-gold, or, in the 

 case of hardhack and 

 shrubby cinquefoil, to 

 a deep chocolate, these 

 dead stalks stand up 

 rigid above the snow, 

 and each one reveals 

 all that it possesses 

 of linear charm and 

 intricacy. And how 

 much that almost in- 

 variably is ! Here, in a 

 space of a few feet near 

 the fence, where for 

 some reason the cows 

 did not crop the pasture close last summer, the 

 etcher's needle has fixed in beauty no less than a 

 score of different designs, some of them as lovely as a 

 snow crystal. Take, for example, that spray of wood 

 asters. The stem rises above the crust, and then 

 curves gracefully down-wind, throwing out wiry 

 branchlets, each branchlet hung with tiny stars, 

 each star the shell that once held a pale-blue flower. 

 They are no less lovely, surely, than the flowers 

 — these stiff little straw-brown stars etched on the 

 gleaming snow. Beside them are the brown plumes 



