These are kept moist by water trickling down from hidden
springs among the roots of the shrubs and vines, ferns and mosses
which soften the grim limestone into beauty of form and color.
[Illustration: "LIES ASLEEP IN A DREAM OF SUNSHINE" (p. 111)]
In the cool days of September, when walking is a fine art, I love to
accompany the lower portion of the old creek down to the river,
following the little path made by farmer boys and fishermen. The two
posts at the fence by the roadside, set just far enough apart for a
man to squeeze himself through, are the gates to a land elysian. When
I pass through them I am a thousand miles from the city with its toil
and pain, its strife and sorrow. Worldly cares drop from my back as I
stand upon the brink of this creek and watch the water spreading
itself out over the white sand. Time and distance lose their force as
factors in my life. I have found and entered the lost lands of
Theocritus. Beneath this black ash, touched here and there with the
purple wistfulness of the passing year, Pan might have sat to play his
pipes, the Cyclops might have pleaded with the graceful Galatea. This
haze which hangs over the white oak grove, for aught I know, may be
the incense from Druid fires. Along this valley Chaucer's Immortals
may have gone a pilgriming, and in this bosky wood Robin Hood may have
trained his band.
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