Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 252

The only extended view possible to anyone less tall than the fences was that obtained from an upper bough of the apple tree.

The primary quality of that view seems, now, to have been its quietness, but that cannot at the time have impressed us.

What one actually remembers is its greenness.

From high in the tree, the whole block lay within range of the eye, but the ground was almost nowhere visible.

One looked down on a sea of leaves, a breaking wave of flower.

Every path from back door to barn was covered by a grape-arbor, and every yard had its fruit trees.

In the center of any open space remaining our grandfathers had planted syringa and sweet-shrub, snowball, rose-of-Sharon and balm-of-Gilead.

From above one could only occasionally catch a glimpse of life on the floor of this green sea: a neighbor's gingham skirt flashing into sight for an instant on the path beneath her grape-arbor, or the movement of hands above a clothesline and the flutter of garments hung there, half-way down the block.