Elsie's room was almost as peculiar as her dress and ornaments. It was a
kind of museum of objects, such as the woods are full of to those who
have eyes to see them, but many of them such as only few could hope to
reach, even if they knew where to look for them. Crows' nests, which are
never found but in the tall trees, commonly enough in the forks of
ancient hemlocks, eggs of rare birds, which must have taken a quick eye
and a hard climb to find and get hold of, mosses and ferns of unusual
aspect, and quaint monstrosities of vegetable growth, such as Nature
delights in, showed that Elsie had her tastes and fancies like any
naturalist or poet.
Nature, when left to her own freaks in the forest, is grotesque and
fanciful to the verge of license, and beyond it. The foliage of trees
does not always require clipping to make it look like an image of life.
From those windows at Canoe Meadow, among the mountains, we could see all
summer long a lion rampant, a Shanghai chicken, and General Jackson on
horseback, done by Nature in green leaves, each with a single tree.
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