Indeed, I did not want to move, it was all so new and
fascinating. The tall pine-trees whispering to each other across
the sky-openings above me, the graceful ferns, the velvet mosses
dotted with scarlet fairy-cups, as if the elves had just spread
their table for tea, the unspeakable charm of the spice-breathing
air, all wove a web of enchantment about me, from which I had no
wish to disentangle myself. The silent spell of the woods held
me with a power stronger even than that of the solemn-voiced sea.
Sometimes this same brother would get permission to take me on a
longer excursion,--to visit the old homestead at "The Farms."
Three or four miles was not thought too long a walk for a healthy
child of five years; and that road, in the old time, led through
a rural Paradise, beautiful at every season,--whether it were the
time of song-sparrows and violets, of wild roses, of coral-hung
barberry-bushes, or of fallen leaves and snow-drifts. The
wildness of the road, now exchanged for elegant modern
cultivation, was its great charm to us.
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