CIRCUIT OF THE SUMMER HILLS 



hand touched the stone. He had won! As I sat on 

 my porch, the recklessness and absurdity of a man 

 more than threescore and ten running down a wood- 

 chuck came over me; and I have not yielded to such 

 a temptation since. 



u 



Where cattle and woodchucks thrive, there thrive 

 I. The pastoral is in my veins. Clover and timothy, 

 daisies and buttercups indirectly colored my youth- 

 ful life; and if the dairy cow did not rock my cradle, 

 her products sustained the hand that did rock it. 

 Hence I love this land of wide, open, grassy fields, 

 of smooth, broad-backed hills, and of long, flowing 

 mountain lines. The cow fits well into these scenes. 

 It seems as if her broad, smooth muzzle and her 

 sweeping tongue might have shaped the landscape; 

 it is certainly her cropping that has brought about 

 the hourglass form of so many of the red thorn 

 trees, which give a unique feature to the fields. Her 

 fragrant breath is upon the air, her hoof-prints are 

 upon the highway; she may not yet have attained 

 to wisdom, yet surely all her ways are ways of 

 pleasantness and all her paths are paths of peace. 

 Hence, when her ways and her paths coincide with 

 mine, T thrive best. From Woodchuck Lodge I look 

 out upon broad pastures, lands where dairy herds 

 have grazed for "a hundred years, never the same 

 herd for many summers, but all of the same habits 

 31 



