The children, too, make themselves at home. J-----
spends his time from morning to night fishing for minnows or trout, and
catching nothing at all, and U---- and R----- have been riding between
fields and barn in a hay-cart. The roads give us beautiful walks along
the river-side, or wind away among the gentle hills; and if we had
nothing else to look at in these walks, the hedges and stone fences would
afford interest enough, so many and pretty are the flowers, roses,
honeysuckles, and other sweet things, and so abundantly does the moss and
ivy grow among the old stones of the fences, which would never have a
single shoot of vegetation on them in America till the very end of time.
But here, no sooner is a stone fence built, than Nature sets to work to
make it a part of herself. She adopts it and adorns it, as if it were
her own child. A little sprig of ivy may be seen creeping up the side,
and clinging fast with its many feet; a tuft of grass roots itself
between two of the stones, where a little dust from the road has been
moistened into soil for it: a small bunch of fern grows in another such
crevice; a deep, soft, green moss spreads itself over the top and all
along the sides of the fence; and wherever nothing else will grow,
lichens adhere to the stones and variegate their lines. Finally, a great
deal of shrubbery is sure to cluster along its extent, and take away all
hardness from the outline; and so the whole stone fence looks as if God
had had at least as much to do with it as man.
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