So large an extent of
woodland successfully defies landscape gardening. It insists on being
left alone, and its very immensity raises a financial barrier against
trimly-kept gravel walks. There were plenty of landscape garden walks
in the immediate vicinity of the hotel, and some of them ambitiously
penetrated into the woods, relapsing from the civilization of beaten
gravel into a primitive thicket trail, which, however, always led to
some celebrated bit of picturesqueness: a waterfall, or a pulpit rock
upstanding like a tower, or the fancied resemblance of a human face
carved by Nature from the cliff, or a view-point jutting out over the
deep chasm of the valley, which usually supported a rustic summer
house or pavilion where unknown names were carved on the woodwork--
the last resort of the undistinguished to achieve immortality by means
of a jack-knife.
Dorothy discovered a little Eden of her own, to which no discernible
covert-way led, for it was not conspicuous enough to obtain mention in
the little gratis guide which the hotel furnished-- a pamphlet on
coated paper filled with half-tone engravings, and half-extravagant
eulogies of what it proclaimed to be, an earthly paradise, with the
rates by the day or week given on the cover page to show on what terms
this paradise might be enjoyed.
Dorothy's bower was green, and cool, and crystal, the ruggedness of
the rocks softened by the wealth of foliage.
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