Yes, but in one of the woodland homes of this region I have seen a screen placed by such a rustic stone fence that it not only served the purpose of giving light shade, but was a thing of beauty in itself, dividing the vista into many landscapes, the frame being long or upright according to the planter’s fancy.

Do you remember the old saying “When away keep open thine eyes, and so pack thy trunk for the home-going?”

On this drive of ours I’ve been cramming my trunk to overflowing, and yet the ideas are often the simplest possible, for the people of this region, with more inventive art than money, have the perfect gift of adapting that which lies nearest to hand.

You spoke in your last chronicle of the screen of white birches through which you saw the sun rise over the meadows of Opal Farm.  This birch springs up in waste lands almost everywhere.  We have it in abundance in the wood lot on the side of our hill, and it is scattered through the wet woods below our wild walk, showing that all it needs is a foothold.

Because it is common and the wood rather weak and soft, landscape gardening has rather passed it by, turning a cold shoulder, yet the slender tree is very beautiful.  True, it has not the length of life, the girth and strength of limb, of the silver-barked canoe birch, but the white birch will grow in a climate that fevers its northern cousin.  In spite of its delicate qualities, it is not a trivial tree, for I have seen it with a bole of more than forty feet in length, measuring eighteen inches through at the ground.  When you set it, you are not planting for posterity, perhaps, but will gain a speedy result; and the fertility of the tree, when once established, will take care of the future.

What is more charming after a summer shower than a natural cluster of these picturesque birches, as they often chance to group themselves in threes, like the Graces—­the soft white of the trunks, with dark hieroglyphic shadows here and there disappearing in a drapery of glossy leaves, green above and reflecting the bark colour underneath, all a-quiver and more like live things poised upon the russet twigs than delicate pointed leaves!  Then, when the autumn comes, how they stand out in company with cedar bushes and sheep laurel on the hillsides to make beautiful the winter garden, and we stand in mute admiration when these white birches reach from a snowbank and pencil their frosty tracery against a wall of hemlocks.

This is the simple material that has been used with such wonderful effect.  In the gardens hereabout they have flanked their alleys with the birches, for even when fully grown their habit is more poplar-like than spreading, and many plants, like lilies, requiring partial shade flourish under them; while for fences and screens the trees are planted in small groups, with either stones and ferns, or shrubs set thick between, and the most beautiful winter fence that Evan