the farms, two of us left the carriage, and followed a footpath along the green river bank and through the pastures, coming out to the road again only a minute later than the horses.  I believe that it is an old Indian trail followed from the salmon falls farther down the river, where the up-country Indians came to dry the plentiful fish for their winter supplies.  I have traced the greater part of this deep-worn footpath, which goes straight as an arrow across the country, the first day’s trail being from the falls (where Mason’s settlers came in 1627, and built their Great Works of a saw-mill with a gang of saws, and presently a grist mill beside) to Emery’s Bridge.  I should like to follow the old footpath still farther.  I found part of it by accident a long time ago.  Once, as you came close to the river, you were sure to find fishermen scattered along,—­sometimes I myself have been discovered; but it is not much use to go fishing any more.  If some public-spirited person would kindly be the Frank Buckland of New England, and try to have the laws enforced that protect the inland fisheries, he would do his country great service.  Years ago, there were so many salmon that, as an enthusiastic old friend once assured me, “you could walk across on them below the falls;” but now they are unknown, simply because certain substances which would enrich the farms are thrown from factories and tanneries into our clear New England streams.  Good river fish are growing very scarce.  The smelts, and bass, and shad have all left this upper branch of the Piscataqua, as the salmon left it long ago, and the supply of one necessary sort of good cheap food is lost to a growing community, for the lack of a little thought and care in the factory companies and saw-mills, and the building in some cases of fish-ways over the dams.  I think that the need of preaching against this bad economy is very great.  The sight of a proud lad with a string of undersized trout will scatter half the idlers in town into the pastures next day, but everybody patiently accepts the depopulation of a fine clear river, where the tide comes fresh from the sea to be tainted by the spoiled stream, which started from its mountain sources as pure as heart could wish.  Man has done his best to ruin the world he lives in, one is tempted to say at impulsive first thought; but after all, as I mounted the last hill before reaching the village, the houses took on a new look of comfort and pleasantness; the fields that I knew so well were a fresher green than before, the sun was down, and the provocations of the day seemed very slight compared to the satisfaction.  I believed that with a little more time we should grow wiser about our fish and other things beside.

It will be good to remember the white rose road and its quietness in many a busy town day to come.  As I think of these slight sketches, I wonder if they will have to others a tinge of sadness; but I have seldom spent an afternoon so full of pleasure and fresh and delighted consciousness of the possibilities of rural life.