how beauty of tangled thicket and room for 
gathering of bloom and bird are growing rarer; 
for are not the straggling fences rotting down 
and giving place to fences of wire, which leave 
no least protection from grazing herd or flock, 
or tramping foot, for brier, or clump of grasses 
or blackberry, with its arch of vine and sweet, 
blinding surprise of snow-white blossoms? But 
all this shelter the railroad supplies, and calls to 
the homeless garden of nature, ‘I will give you 
room,” and makes good this cordial invitation. 
On either side of the track is a goodly breadth 
given over to nature. A ditch dug in build- 
ing the road-bed gives place for water to stand, 
and where water stands there is invitation for 
flag and cat-tail and swamp-grasses; and the 
embankment gives privilege for the wild rose to 
hold tryst with the wild bee, and makes banks 
leaning south, where in the new springtime 
violets may stand in pools of blue, and grasses 
may grow, unafraid of the lowing herd. If you, 
friend, have never known how dear a shelter the 
barren railroad affords nature's refugees, pray 
you give the matter heed. 
Five miles of invitation of perfumed June 
lie before me. The last robin of my journey 
calls with its flute-note from the fringes of the 
village. He hugs the town, I fear me, over- 
much, and I tremble lest his morals become 
corrupted; but he eyes me from his barn-roof 
with a curious look, as if commiserating the 
moneyless traveler who must plod along the 
track instead of riding on the train or going on 
a robin's speeding wings. If men are not small 
folks in the bird's eyes, 1 miss my guess. They 
have a right to feel aristocrats, who have wings 
and know how to fly. The skies are fair high- 
ways for treading; and I piously envy all winged 
things. Sometimes, | fear I love the country 
129 
