wheat; but still the land was lovelier than any I had ever seen, with its
old farmhouses, and brambled gray stone walls, its stony hillsides, its
staggering orchards, its wooded tops, and its thick-brackened valleys.
From West to East the difference was as great as I afterwards found it
from America to Europe, and my impression of something quaint and strange
was no keener when I saw Old England the next year than when I saw New
England now. I had imagined the landscape bare of trees, and I was
astonished to find it almost as full of them as at home, though they all
looked very little, as they well might to eyes used to the primeval
forests of Ohio. The road ran through them from time to time, and took
their coolness on its smooth hard reaches, and then issued again in the
glisten of the open fields.

I made phrases to myself about the scenery as we drove along; and yes, I
suppose I made phrases about the young girl who was one of the inside
passengers, and who, when the common strangeness had somewhat worn off,
began to sing, and sang most of the way to Concord. Perhaps she was not
very sage, and I am sure she was not of the caste of Vere de Vere, but
she was pretty enough, and she had a voice of a bird-like tunableness, so
that I would not have her out of the memory of that pleasant journey if I
could. She was long ago an elderly woman, if she lives, and I suppose
she would not now point out her fellow-passenger if he strolled in the
evening by the house where she had dismounted, upon her arrival in
Concord, and laugh and pull another girl away from the window, in the
high excitement of the prodigious adventure.




XV.