Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/158

 know it, for they have paled to a wan, tan brown, as delicately beautiful as you shall find on any autumn-tinted tree of the forest. The woodbine is a deep, rich red, and the poison ivy that helps it garland the old walls has ripened its leaves to the loveliest apple reds and yellows that can be found. There are sweeter-natured things than this poison ivy which beautifies old walls and fences at this time of year, but nothing that gives us quite such softly delectable tints of ripeness. It seems as if these ought to tempt us from the cheek of some rarely palatable fruit rather than the poisonous leaf of this vixenish vine.

"The wide-spreading pond and the mill that stood by it" have long since done their work and the mill of Woodworth's day has passed. Yet the pond remains in all respects as he knew it, the deep tangled wildwood lining its one shore, the road and a fringe of houses skirting the other, and below it another mill, long since fallen into disuse and decay, for the one that Woodworth recalled was a product of the century before the last one. Over the stones of the old dam the water trickles down and meets the salt tides of the sea, and here