EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 127 
Hosmer (rough-cast) house, I thought I never 
saw any bank so handsome as the russet hill¬ 
side behind it. It is a very barren, exhausted 
soil where the cladonia lichens abound, and the 
lower side is a flowing sand, but this russet 
grass, with its weeds, being saturated with 
moisture, was, in this light, the richest brown, 
methought, that I ever saw. There was the 
pale brown of the grass, red-brown of some 
weeds (sarothra and pinweed, probably), dark 
brown of huckleberry and sweet fern stems, and 
the very visible green of the cladonias, thirty 
rods off, and the rich brown fringes where the 
broken sod hung over the sand-bank. 
On some knolls these vivid and rampant lichens, 
as it were, dwarf the oaks. A peculiar and 
unaccountable light seemed to fall on that 
bank or hillside, though it was thick storm all 
around. A sort of Newfoundland sun seemed 
to be shining on it. It was such a light that 
you looked round for the sun from which it 
might come.It was a prospect to excite 
a reindeer. These tints of brown were as softly 
and richly fair and sufficing as the most bril¬ 
liant autumnal tints. In'fair and dry weather 
these spots may be commonplace. But now 
they are worthy to tempt the painter’s brush. 
The picture should be the side of a barren, 
lichen-clad hill with a flowing sand-bank be- 
