22 



WINTER SUNSHINE. 



the Enchantress has folded and folded the world in 

 her web, it is by all means the course to take. Your 

 staff rings on the hard ground, the road, a misty white 

 belt, gleams and vanishes before you, the woods are 

 cavernous and still, the fields lie in a lunar trance, 

 and you will yourself return fairly mesmerized by the 

 beauty of the scene. 



. Or you can bend your steps eastward over the East- 

 ern Branch, up Good Hope Hill and on till you strike 

 the Marlborough pike, as a trio of us did that cold 

 February Sunday we walked from Washington to 

 Pumpkintown and back. 



A short sketch of this pilgrimage is a fair sample 

 of these winter walks. 



The delight I experienced in making this new ac- 

 quisition to my geography was, of itself, sufficient to 

 atone for any aches or weariness I may have felt. 

 The mere fact that one may walk from Washington 

 to Pumpkintown, was a discovery I had been all these 

 years in making. I had walked to Slago, and to the 

 Northwest Branch, and had made the Falls of the Po- 

 tomac in a circuitous route of ten miles, coming sud- 

 denly upon the river in one of its wildest passes ; but 

 I little dreamed all the while that there, in a wrinkle 

 (or shall I say furrow ?) of the Maryland hills, almost 

 visible from the outlook of the bronze squaw on the 

 dome of the Capitol, and just around the head of Oxen 

 Run, lay Pumpkintown. 



The day was cold but the sun was bright, and the 



