and yellow violets, soon to be followed by that loveliest of all Ohio wild flowers, called by the country people, ‘Dutchman’s breeches,’ but in more refined parlance, denominated ‘pantalettes,’ looking for all the world as if the fairies had just done a day’s washing and hung out their sweet little nether garments to dry, suspended in rows from the tiny rods that so gracefully bend beneath the pretty burden.  Pure white are they, or of such a delicate flesh-tint, the fairy washerwoman might well be proud of her work.  Other spots were sacred to the yellow lily, with its singular, fierce-looking leaf, spotted like a panther’s hide, growing in solitary couples, protecting between them the slender stalk with its drooping yellow bell.  Later in the season come the larger and more brilliantly tinted flowers, the wild purple larkspur, the great yellow buttercup, and the lilac flox.  There were dusky depths in the wood, too, into which, book in hand, we sometimes retreated from the mid-summer heat into an atmosphere of moist and murky coolness.  There we found the Indian pipe, or ghost-flower—­leaf, stem, and flower, all white as wax, turning to coal-black if long brought into light, or if pressed between the leaves of a book.

This first little wood, then, though somewhat dark and damp, had its pleasant and cheerful associations; but the wood beyond was weird and dismal, with its dense shade, its fallen trees rotting in dark gullies, its depth of decaying leaves, into which your feet sank down and down, until in alarm you doubted whether there were really any footing beneath, or if it would be possible ever to extricate yourself again.  These two woods touched only at one point, included in an angle between a little burying-ground, whose solemn associations increased the gloom of the farther wood.  As children, we had been wont, in adventurous moods, to cross one corner of the burying-ground, and striking into a ravine within this wood, down which trickled a little dark stream, wade up it barefoot, with grave, half-awe-stricken faces, until the stream sank again beneath the dead leaves, emptying itself I know not where.  We had given wild and fantastic names to some of the ways and places about this ravine, but the rest of the wood was so little attractive and enjoyable that we generally avoided it, unless in some ramble of unusual length, we wished to strike across one portion of it, making thereby a somewhat shorter cut into the turnpike road a mile or two beyond.

As I stood this hot summer-day looking toward the woods, suddenly there stood before me a strongly-made middle-aged negro woman.  Whether she had glided round the house, or in what way she had come so suddenly and quietly before me, I do not know; but there she stood, bare-headed, and humbly asking for a piece of bread, or any cold food that I could spare.  Her appearance struck me with surprise; her skin was of a deep, rich, yellow brown, her face soft and kindly in expression, but wonderfully swollen, and with the