A farmer passing through with
his axe is but an intruder, and children straying home from school
give one a feeling of solicitude at their unprotectedness. The pine
woods are the red man's house, and it may be hazardous even yet for
the gray farmhouses to stand so near the eaves of the forest. I have
noticed a distrust of the deep woods, among elderly people, which was
something more than a fear of losing their way. It was a feeling of
defenselessness against some unrecognized but malicious influence.
Driving through the long woodland way, shaded and chilly when you are
out of the sun; across the Great Works River and its pretty elm-grown
intervale; across the short bridges of brown brooks; delayed now and
then by the sight of ripe strawberries in sunny spots by the roadside,
one comes to a higher open country, where farm joins farm, and the
cleared fields lie all along the highway, while the woods are pushed
back a good distance on either hand. The wooded hills, bleak here and
there with granite ledges, rise beyond. The houses are beside the
road, with green door-yards and large barns, almost empty now, and
with wide doors standing open, as if they were already expecting the
hay crop to be brought in. The tall green grass is waving in the
fields as the wind goes over, and there is a fragrance of whiteweed
and ripe strawberries and clover blowing through the sunshiny barns,
with their lean sides and their festoons of brown, dusty cobwebs;
dull, comfortable creatures they appear to imaginative eyes, waiting
hungrily for their yearly meal.
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