"It is no advantage to live in a great city, where poverty degrades and failure brings despair. The fields are lovelier than paved streets, and the great forests than walls of brick. Oaks and elms are more poetic than steeples and chimneys. In the country is the idea of home. There you see the rising and setting sun; you become acquainted with the stars and clouds. The constellations are your friends. You hear the rain on the roof and listen to the rhythmic sighing of the winds. You are thrilled by the resurrection called Spring, touched and saddened by Autumn, the grace and poetry of death. Every field is a picture, a landscape; every landscape a poem; every flower a tender thought; and every forest a fairy-land. In the country you preserve your identity, your personality. There you are an aggregation of atoms, but in the city you are only an atom of an aggregation." The historian of the Berkshires, Clark W. Bryan of Great Barrington, thus poetically describes the Berkshire hills and homes: "Between where Hudson's waters flow Adown from gathering streams, And where the clear Connecticut, In lengthened beauty gleams-- Where run bright rills, and stand high rocks,-- Where health and beauty comes, And peace and happiness abides, Rest Berkshire's Hills and Homes. "The Hoosac winds its tortuous course, The Housatonic sweeps Through fields of living loveliness, As on its course it keeps. Old Saddleback stands proudly by, Among Taconic's peaks, And rugged mountain Monument Of Indian legend speaks. "Mount Washington with polished brow, Green in the summer days, Or white with winter's driving storms, Or with autumn's flame ablaze, Looms up across the southern sky, In native beauty dressed-- The home of Bash-Bish, weird and old, Anear the mountain's crest. "And still each streamlet runs its course, And still each mountain stands, While Berkshire's sons and daughters roam Through home and foreign lands; But though they roam, or though they rest, A thought spontaneous comes, Of love and veneration for Our Berkshire Hills and Homes." THE ADIRONDACKS AND THEIR ATTENDANT LAKES. XII. THE ADIRONDACKS AND THEIR ATTENDANT LAKES.