Excerpt from The Moving Finger Writes Old Oaks, the domain of the Alden family, was less ancient than its grand Old trees, whose vener ableness was matter Of historic fact. The house stood a little to one side in a park whose perfection Of finish contrasted incongruously with the surround ing country, which was a waste of tangled forests where owls hooted and of meadows where cattle stood knee deep in grass. Within this park every group of trees, every shrub, every flower-bed, every stone even, had its studied and harmonious signifi cance. But the chief charm lay in the sweep of the land itself. From the stone terraces at the front and sides of the mansion the smooth-shaven lawns fell away in gracious Slopes that rounded into each other in melting curves and soft declines, here run ning together into a daisied mound for a sylvan seat, there breaking into a foam of flowers against an un expected rock, and here again dividing to give right Of way to a path SO tantalizingly alluring that no human foot could choose but follow it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.