ii8 



AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



soul, in the forest — as it were the voice of a priest 

 deep in the distance chanting the litany. 



There is an abandoned path yonder winding its 

 way leisurely into the woods. The old paths — whither 

 do they lead? If we could but trace them, and knew 

 the feet that had passed over them ! How they twine 

 in and out among long-forgotten fields of golden-rod, 

 in under drooping boughs, or perchance through a 

 small belt of timber, where the paths are scarcely dis- 

 cernible now on account of the saplings that have 

 sprung up in or near them. Every now and then they 

 cross little stretches of open grass, to disappear again 

 into the thickets and the dimness. Perhaps the one 

 now ahead of us was once used as a cow or a sheep 

 path, or led to the spring for water from a cabin, and 

 it may have served at times as a gypsy patteran. How 

 many memories cluster about it ! The old path re- 

 mains hard, and consequently no grass grows upon it 

 to obliterate it. Even where the underbrush comes up 

 and obscures it, the meandering footway is still ap- 

 parent, a long line running through the forest, covered 

 with matted fallen leaves. As we follow it, though 

 often the trail becomes uncertain close at hand and 

 dwindles because of the myriad leaves that have drifted 

 about and filled it, we can see that it borders an old 

 rail fence and leads far beyond across the brook — 

 whither? — and why? 



These old zigzag, stake-and-rider, snake fences are 

 the only ones that have any poetry to them, but they 

 have; and as I have pulled them apart and loaded up 

 the old lichened rails, useless now except for firewood, 

 I have wondered who first split them long ago, and 



