Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1856-07-11

farm; that curious little solitary highway
that turns and twists and starts aside for !
no conceivable reason; all footpaths ID
the fields look as if they were trodden
out by lovers or madmen. Not far on
was the wood where the sweet fern
breathed its fragrance and the bayberry
repeated it; where the checkerberry
spread its aromatic leaves and berries,
and the black birch initiated its flavor
with its bark SO economical is New Eng
land nature in the matter of perfumes
and spicery. o, the remembrance ofthe
DAYS passed amidst these homely scenes !
of tumbling in long grass, and sucking
of hOneyed clover, and burrowing in
mountainous haycocks, and climbing OF
elbowed apple trees, of waking to the
clamor of twittering swallows, and sleep
ing at the curfew of purring crickets of
Indian corn forests, where, being little,
you walk unseen, while the brocaded
leaves grated and cracked as you rustled
between the stalks; of wild cherry trees,
with bark as bright and brown as fresh
bronze, where the robing fought and scol-
ded for the small berries; of old elms
where the fire-hang-bird swung her long
puse with the half-dozen eggs in it /; ma
lures liberal reckoning when she gives
change for an old couple, with or with
out feathers of the chestnut tree that
dropped its burs at the first frost, gaping
like dead shell-fsh on the sea-shore; of
the sweet music that is in the open air
from the days when you hear the soft
breathing of the cows as they crop the
tender grass, to the hot July moons when
the mower passes through the purple red
top and the heavy nodding herdsgrass,
the measured respiration of his scythe
signing over each rank as it falls with its
lances and pennons and later still, when
the red leaves crackle under foot, and
the wild-goose wedges steer southwark,
heard high in the frosty air; and at last,
when the wind whistles in the bare trees
and the ice snaps in the ponds like the
strings of an over-strained harpsichord,
and so the frozen palms of winter crash
out the last chorus of the years sympho-
my!
If you were born and bred among
such sights and sounds as these, they will
never die out of your remembrance. I
is hard if man who works in poison.
shall carry them about with him ever al
ter, and natures kindly atmospher
breathed in so long shall not make par
of our system and run in our blood "a
3 long as our systems hold together and on
blood flows. This is the privilege of tn
young man of New England birth; ma
ture, not wholly rough and uncultivatet
not as in many newer sections of tn
country, still reeking with undrained me-
rasses that breed disease, and deforme
with unsightly ruins of the forest tha
defy the spirit of beauty to find Resin
place among them but nature, subdue
and harmonized, without being deprive
of its greennese and fragrance, is hi
birthright; it gives him lessons of beau
ty no counting-house can smother wit
its ledgers; it gives his soul horizon n
: lines of warehouses can SO wall in tn;
he will not see its blue heavens throug
- them; it gives him an inward sanctuar
. of peace and repose that the streets ca
never shake him out of let him tread Il
: grass for fifteen summers, and then plc
m the pavement forty years, and his dream
- will still be of running barefoot amor
:. the clover.