Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/196

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��One Summer. A Remuiiscence.

��cut-glass decanters, which his father used on such occasions.

The next morning after the Fourth, I started out through the field for the pasture. The grass was tall, and it waved gently in the morning breeze. The whiteweed and clover sent forth an agreeable perfume. In the low ground buttercups were shining like gold dollars, sprinkled through the tall herdsgi-ass. Yellow-weed, the farmer's scourge, held up its brown and yellow head in defiance.

On a knoll, a little before I reached the graveyard, I passed over a piece of ground where the winter had killed the grass roots. Here I found sorrel, cinque- foil, and a few bunches of blue-eyed grass growing. Nature seemed to try to conceal the barrenness of the spot with beauty. It was a grave, decorated.

Off to my right, in a piece of rank grass, where branches of dock had sprung up, bobolinks were swinging on the pale, green sprays, filling the air with melody. " Bobohnk, bobolink, spirk, spank, spink, chee, chee, chee ! "

I knew that " Mrs. Robert of Lin- coln " was sitting contentedly on her little round nest, under a tuft of grass, very near the sweet singer. I paused at the graveyard, and looked over the wall. I read : " Margaret and Fran- ces Wetherell, daughters of John and Hannah Wetherell, aged i8 and 20 years." I knew these were the girls who had died of the fever; a twin gravestone had been put up to their graves. Another stone told of a little girl, two and a half years old — Cath- erine. I reckoned up the date, and had she been living, she would have been over forty years old. Many other stones stood there, but I left them without reading the inscriptions, and hastened on to the pines.

��I stepped over the low wall between the field and pasture and walked down by the brook until I came to the Stony Bridge. This I crossed and followed up on the broad wheelpath. The pines smelled so sweet : the grass was short and green : everything seemed calm and cool. 1 sat down by a large Norway pine and watched the birds. Right below me I saw a fox-hole, with the entrance so barri- caded with sticks and stones, that I felt very sure poor Reynard must have been captured unless he dug out somewhere else. I began to walk around. Six or seven feet to the south of the besieged door, I discovered another entrance. I don't know whether some animal was still living in the old house, or no : but this hole looked as if it were used. A little pine grew in front, a juniper made its roof and spread its fine branches over the door, squaw vines and check- erberry leaves grew on either side.

I walked on in the wheelpath. On the north side many tall Norway pines were growing, with white pines scat- tered here and there. Crimson poly- galas were carpeting the ground in open spaces ; pale anemones and deli- cate star-flowers were still blooming under the protection of small pines ; wild strawberries were blossoming in cold places ; and I wondered when they would fruit.

Finally I came to an open field, or what looked like land that had been cultivated. Hosts of bluets and plots of mouse-ear everlasting, had taken possession of the land. Small pines were scattered here and there, like settlers in a new country. Junipers were creeping stealthily in, as if expect- ing the axe. There were traces of where a fence had run along. I con-

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