Book Reviews 



383 



"Green Trails What a book for the shut-in, for the war-wearied or 

 AND Upland war-wounded mortal ! Here is a real and living bit of 

 Pastures"* New England spread out before our western eyes; a 

 country commonplace and unpretentious to us western- 

 ers, used as we are to the great inland valle3^s, the endless expanses of 

 desert and the sky-piercing mountains of our Pacific Coast. It takes a 

 Walter Prichard Eaton to disclose the charm of the Berkshires, and a 

 Walter King Stone to picture it for us. Ordinary hill pastures take on 

 dainty beauties of form, color and vista under Eaton's loving gaze. Pad- 

 dling a canoe down a little stream is fraught with all the wonders and 

 mysteries of a trip up the Amazon. Even though only a few yards from 

 a well-traveled road, you are utterly alone in a beautiful world, flower- 

 fringed, tree-shaded. No gardener can equal a river, Eaton tells us. It 

 understands the art of border, draping its banks with "wild grape-vines, 

 a little feathery clematis and great masses of wild balsam, apple . . . 

 The current is the gardener who keeps the edge in line, the beautiful 

 sweeping line of the bend." 



Rivers have their fascination, but so too do the stone walls on the 

 New England country. These "artless hedgerows" in Eaton's glowing 

 phrase "march in feathery beauty between a thousand fields, up hill and 

 down, bright at their base with mulleins and milk-weed, with roses and 

 goldenrod, harboring chipmunks within the old wall which is their spine, 

 and white-throats flitting in their branches." 



Flashes of lightsome humor liven Eaton's simple conversational style. 

 Occasionally, however, its grace and humor is marred by self-conscious- 

 ness. He pleads guilty to dropping into the fallacy of personifying na- 

 ture, and discourses on his lapse at such length that we feel the tire- 

 someness of the discussion a greater sin than the original ; for the chief 

 commandment to an author is "Thou shalt not bore." 



Only once does Eaton leave his beloved home country. Then he sud- 

 denly transports us to Glacier National Park. Here, as we would ex- 

 pect, his spirit expands and soars to meet the awe-inspiring beauty of 

 the Rockies. Perhaps it was from this visit to the national parks of the 

 West that Eaton received his inspiration as to the future for his beloved 

 but neglected New England hills. Back of his love for them one feels 

 all the time the question : What is to become of all this neglected coun- 

 try; these outworn farms, abandoned hamlets and villages? Country 

 roads and canals are too distant to help open up this country again, the 

 railroads have passed so far off that they are of no use. All the ener- 

 getic and younger people have gone to the cities ; it is not likely they will 

 return. No, we can not look for a return of the vigor of pioneer days in 

 these lonely hills; but why not convert this country into a playground 

 for the people teeming in the cities of the Atlantic Coast? Why not 

 make a great national forest out of the Berkshires? Many, I suppose, 



* Green Trails and Upland Pastures. By Walter Prichard Eaton. Doubleday, 

 Page & Co. 1917. Price, $1.60 net. 



