' Tall gaunt black trees stretch out their withered arms on
either side, as if balancing themselves against a fall, while huge
trunks lie scattered over the ground, where they fell in their fierce
conflict with the devouring fire that overthrew them. The ground is
thickly covered with ashes, and large white glistening granite rocks,
which had formerly been concealed by moss, the creeping evergreen, and
the smiling, blushing may-flower, now rear their cold snowy heads that
contrast so strangely with the funereal pall that envelopes all around
them. No living thing is seen there, nor bird, nor animal, nor insect,
nor verdant plant; even the hardy fire-weed has not yet ventured to
intrude on this scene of desolation, and the woodpecker, afraid of the
atmosphere which charcoal has deprived of vitality, shrinks back in
terror when he approaches it. Poor Dechamps, had you remained to
witness this awful conflagration, you would have observed in those
impenetrable boulders of granite a type of the hard, cold, unfeeling
world around you, and in that withered and blackened forest, a fitting
emblem of your blighted and blasted prospects.
"But if the trees had disappeared from that side of the lake, they had
been reproduced on the other. The fields, the lawn, and the garden
were over-run with a second growth of wood that had nearly concealed
the house from view.
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