There is nothing like a wide horizon to give a boy aspirations--nothing like a hill-farm to give him hope--especially the hope of leaving it. In spring, on a day of expectation, when the warm air has not yet brought out the flowers, and carts go past with loads of young trees whose dry roots and branches look like emblems of old hopes still unfulfilled, a boy is working on the top of Ford Hill. The five-inch soil covering the solid rock that forms the New York hill--the first of all, perhaps, to show its head above the pristine waters--has nourished a lofty forest which, battling with everlasting winds, resembles a body of men strong from incessant toil: its elms and beeches are so tough they defy the forester, and are fit only for water-wheel shafts. Working among these adamantine timbers, the boy stops to look across the broad and deep valley. Not at the old hill-quarries opposite, in whose depths snow lies all summer, does he look, nor at the hanging woods above the new piece, nor at the yellow farmhouse and barn; but higher, toward the west, where, on a level with his eye, 'twixt hills like cloud-banks, he sees a white streak, the distant lake. Storms are running down the Deerfield hills. In one of the woody valleys rain-clouds have formed a mirage, another seeming lake, and from its bosom rise to the clear, fine air of the hills the muffled clangor and whistle of the New York Central train, in the boy's mind a glittering image fleeing to splendid cities, and one that he longs to follow.