For in all woods and by every wayside there prospers
an abominable shrub or weed, called poison-oak, whose very
neighbourhood is venomous to some, and whose actual touch is
avoided by the most impervious.
The two houses, with their vineyards, stood each in a green niche
of its own in this steep and narrow forest dell. Though they were
so near, there was already a good difference in level; and Mr.
M'Eckron's head must be a long way under the feet of Mr. Schram.
No more had been cleared than was necessary for cultivation; close
around each oasis ran the tangled wood; the glen enfolds them;
there they lie basking in sun and silence, concealed from all but
the clouds and the mountain birds.
Mr. M'Eckron's is a bachelor establishment; a little bit of a
wooden house, a small cellar hard by in the hillside, and a patch
of vines planted and tended single-handed by himself. He had but
recently began; his vines were young, his business young also; but
I thought he had the look of the man who succeeds. He hailed from
Greenock: he remembered his father putting him inside Mons Meg,
and that touched me home; and we exchanged a word or two of Scotch,
which pleased me more than you would fancy.
Mr. Schram's, on the other hand, is the oldest vineyard in the
valley, eighteen years old, I think; yet he began a penniless
barber, and even after he had broken ground up here with his black
malvoisies, continued for long to tramp the valley with his razor.
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