th, such as
Nature delights in, showed that Elsie had her tastes and fancies like
any naturalist or poet.

Nature, when left to her own freaks in the forest, is grotesque and
fanciful to the verge of license, and beyond it. The foliage of trees
does not always require clipping to make it look like an image of
life. From those windows at Canoe Meadow, among the mountains, we
could see all summer long a lion rampant, a Shanghai chicken, and
General Jackson on horse-back, done by Nature in green leaves, each
with a single tree. But to Nature's tricks with boughs and roots and
smaller vegetable growths there is no end. Her fancy is infinite, and
her humor not always refined. There is a perpetual reminiscence of
animal life in her rude caricatures, which sometimes actually reach
the point of imitating the complete human figure, as in that
extraordinary specimen which nobody will believe to be genuine, except
the men of science, and of which the discreet reader may have a
glimpse by application in the proper quarter.

Elsie had gathered so many of these sculpture-like monstrosities, that
one might have thought she had robbed old Sophy's grandfather of his
fetishes. They helped to give her room a kind of enchanted look, as if
a witch had her home in it. Over the fireplace was a long, staff-like
branch, strangled in the spiral coils of one of those vines which
strain the smaller trees in their clinging embraces, sinking into the
bark until the parasite becomes almost identified with its support.
With these sylvan curiosities were blended objects of art, some of
them not less singular, but others showing a love for the beautiful in
form and color, such as a girl of fine organization and nice culture
might naturally be expected to feel and to indulge, in adorning her
apartment.

All these objects, pictures, bronzes, vases, and the rest, did not
detain Mr. Richard Venner very long, whatever may have been his
sensibilities to art. He was more curious about books and papers. A
copy of Keats lay on the table. He opened it and read the name of
_Bernard C. Langdon_ on the blank leaf. An envelope was on the table
with Elsie's name written in a similar hand; but the envelope was
empty, and he could not find the note it contained. Her desk was
locked, and it would not be safe to tamper with it. He had seen
enough; the girl received books and notes from this fellow up at the
school,--this usher, this Yankee quill-driver;--_he_ was aspi