Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-08-13

THE tide of battle rolling over France
i has left ruined houses and desolate
fields in its wake. Such ruins fill you rather
with rage than sorrow and there is nothing
lovely about them. But here in parts OF
eastern America have ruined houses,
deserted fields gone to waste, even roads and
almost whole villages which give you
sense of gentle sadness and are often lovely
in their desolation. They mark, almost al
ways. high tide of pioneer advance in the
eighteenth century, which has either ebbed
again or swept on still further, leaving these
cearings in n kind of forgotten back-water.
Most often, in my part of the country, the
Berkshire Hills, they are houses. fields, roads
and even villages which were built high up
from the valleys and their abandonment has
been due to the railroads.
YESTERDAY chanced upon and fol-
i lowed afoot a road which is still marked
the county map, but which has for years
been abandoned and Is only used occasionally
by the lumbermen. 1t leaves the macadamized
State road, the through motor highway from
New York into the Berkshires and the Green
Mountains, at n right angle and begins al
most at once to climb the side of noun
tain. AS you look at this wall ahead of you
steep that the lodges show through the
heavy forest, you wonder how road ever
gets up to the top, or why 1t should ever
try. OF course, this road Is now grass COW
cred, when it is not the stony bed of brook
and eroded down three or four feet below
the forest floor The forest underground is
pushing out to close it up and the banks are
lined with ferns, wild flowers and masses or
raspberry vines.
WE CLIMBED for perhaps half a mile
w till we were almost under the steep wall
of the mountain, and there we came suddenly
into a clearing of two or three acres, meaning
by clearing place where there were no
forest trees. only masses of berry vines,
shrubs and young saplngs. At first glance
you would have said that the luipbermen had
been in here and made this clearing. But Il
second glance showed that was not the ex-
PLANTATION. Almost hidden under the tangle
of briars by the roadside peeped up the
blooms of old-fashioned day lilies, the inevi-
table Inhabitants Of our grandfathers door
yards. Beating apart the bushes we could
see that these lilies had spread in huge
clumps. little back of them was clus-
ter of spirea, twenty feet across, doubtless
spread from single bush some woman had
planted years and years ago. Still further
back from the road were three or four apple
trees, nothing but jungle of suckers now,
and further investigation disclosed fire weed
the telltale sign of past habtation or OF
forest fires. AS there was no other fire weed
on the mountain concluded that a barn,
at least, had been burned here.
TINE jungle of briars and bushes was so
i thick and rank that we could not find
any trace of where the house had stood. not
| certain that in that clearing there had once
been a house. and later We learned that this
| was so. 1t was built more than 1 90 years ago.
and was abandoned when the old folks
died." not long after the Civil War. Even
| then the railroad in the valley was making
itself felt and the farmers were drifting down
from their pioneer hilltops.
FTNH1S road we were on now began to ascend
L the steep wall of the mountain by long
| switchbacks like road in the Rockies, and
| ultimately reached V-shaped ravine in the
| summit ridge, passed through that beside a
| wild, roaring brook, under huge hemlocks.
| and came after couple of miles more into
| an upland plateau nearly 1000 feet above sea
| level. This plateau Is a township and still
| boasts a church (where no services are heidi
| postottce (Which is just a row of twelve
| boxes in the front room of a farmhouse)
| and a school. 1t is reached. on the map, by
| four roads. but one of them is the one we
| came up. and another is quite as impossible
| to any but pedestrians The other two are
| maintained in fair condition, but each is a
| six-mile pull averaging at least 200 feet to
| the mile. and In winter they are piled ten
| feet deep with drifts You are hardly sur
| prsed to find the fields up here gorgeous
| acres of devils paint brush, white and yell
low daisies. orange-yellow meadow lilies and
the like instead of green expanses of we'll
tended grain. / believe there are fourteen
| voters in the town now. of whom twelve are
| Republicans and all hold some town Office
1'hnre is no store. no village green.
At THE northern end of the platsiu
| "a where one Of the two Travelled roads
kstarts On IL downward plunss-thi ons ipta