By a paradox of pictorial thought, the average lowland North American countryside had at first seemed to me something I accepted with a shock of amused recognition, because of those painted oil cloths which were imported from America in the old days to be hung above washstands in central European nurseries, and which fascinated a drowsy child at bedtime with the rustic green views they depicted: opaque, curly trees, a barn, cattle, a brook, the dull white of vague orchards in bloom, and perhaps a stone fence, or hills of greenish gouache. 