The Land of Content

 It was earliest spring, and almost the close of a day whose sunshine and warmth had coaxed into bloom many timid roadside flowers, and sent the white petals of farmyard cherries trembling to earth like tiny, belated snowfalls. Already the rays of the setting sun were gilding the open space on the top of the mountain where ridge-road and turnpike meet. The ridge-road was only one of the little mountain by-ways that wind through woods and up and down dale as the necessities of the mountain people wear them; the turnpike was an ancient artery connecting North and South, threading cities and villages and farms along its length like trophies on a chain.