In the days when I deemed it necessary to hunt down in my well-thumbed Gray every flower of wood and field, and fit it to its Latin name, I used often to meet this phrase. At first, being young, I resented it. I scorned gardens: their carefully planned and duly tended splendors were not for me. The orchid in the deep woods or by the edge of the lonely swamp, the rare and long-sought heather in the open moorland, these it was that roused my ardor. And to find that some newly discovered flower was not a wild flower at all, but merely a garden flower "escaped"! The very word carried a hint of reprobation.
But as the years went on, the phrase gathered to itself meanings vague and subtle. I found myself welcoming it and regarding with a warmer interest the flower so described. From what old garden had it come? What associations and memories did it bring outof the past? Had the paths where it grew been obliterated by the encroachments of a ruthless civilization, or had the tide of human life drawn away from it and left it to be engulfed by the forest from which it had once been wrested, with nothing left to mark it but a gnarled old lilac tree? I have chanced upon such spots in the heart of the wood, where the lilac and the apple tree and the old stoned cellar wall are all that are left to testify to the human life that once centred there. Or had the garden from which its seed was blown only fallen into a quiet decay, deserted but not destroyed, left to bloom unchecked and untended, and fling its seeds to the summer winds that its flowers might "escape" whither they would?
Lately, I chanced upon such a garden. I was walking along a quiet roadside, almost dusky beneath the shade of close-set giant maples, when an unexpected fragrance breathed upon me. I lingered, wondering. It came again, in a warm wave of the August breeze. I looked up at the tangled bank beside me—surely, there was a spray of box peeping out through the tall weeds! There was abush of it—another! Ah! it was a hedge, a box hedge! Here were the great stone steps leading up to the gate, and here the old, square capped fence-posts, once trim and white, now sunken and silver-gray. The rest of the fence was lying among the grasses and goldenrod, but the box still lived, dead at the top, its leafless branches matted into a hoary gray tangle, but springing up from below in crisp green sprays, lustrous and fragrant as ever, and richly suggestive of the past that produced it. For the box implies not merely human life, but human life on a certain scale: leisurely, decorous, well-considered. It implies faith in an established order and an assured future. A beautiful box hedge is not planned for immediate enjoyment; it is built up inch by inch through the years, a legacy to one's heirs.
Beside the gate-posts stood what must once have been two pillars of box. As I passed between them my feet felt beneath the matted weeds of many seasons the broad stones of the old flagged walk that led up through the garden to the house. Following it, I found, not the house, but the wide stone blocks of the old doorsteps, and beyond these, a ruin—grayashes and blackened brick, two great heaps of stone where the chimneys had been, with the stone slabs that lined the fireplaces fallen together. At one end was the deep stone cellar filled now with young beeches as tall as the house once was. Just outside stood two cherry trees close to the old house wall—so close that they had burned with it and now stood, black and bare and gaunt, in silent comradeship. At the other end I almost stumbled into the old well, dark and still, with a glimmer of sky at the bottom.
But I did not like the ruin, nor the black well lurking in the weeds and ashes. The garden was better, and I went back to it and followed the stone path as it turned past the end of the house and led, under another broad hedge of box now choked by lusty young maples, to the old rose-garden. Beyond were giant lilacs, and groups of waxberry bushes covered with the pretty white balls that children love to string; there was the old-fashioned "burning-bush," already preparing its queer, angled berries for autumn splendors. And among these, still holding their own in the tangle, clumps of the tall, rose-lilac phloxesthat the old people seem specially to have loved, swayed in the light breeze and filled the place with their heavy, languorous fragrance.
Truly, it is a lovely spot, my old garden, lovelier, perhaps, than when it was in its golden prime, when its hedges were faultlessly trimmed and its walks were edged with neat flower borders, when their smooth flagging-stones showed never a weed, and even the little heaps of earth piled up, grain by grain, by the industrious ants, were swept away each morning by the industrious broom. Then human life centred here; now it is very far away. All the sounds of the outside world come faintly to this place and take on its quality of quiet,—the lowing of cows in the pastures, the shouts of men in the fields, the deep, vibrant note of the railroad train which goes singing across distances where its rattle and roar fail to penetrate. It is very still here. Even the birds are quieter, and the crickets and the katydids less boisterous. The red squirrels move warily through the tree-tops with almost a chastened air, the black-and-gold butterflies flutter indolently about theheads of the phlox, a hummingbird, flashing green, hovers about some belated blossom-heads of the scarlet bee-balm, and then, as if to point the stillness, alights on an apple twig, looking, when at rest, so very small! Only the cicada, as he rustles clumsily about with his paper wings against the flaking bark and yellowing leaves of an old apple tree, seems unmindful of the spell of silence that holds the place.
And the garden is mine now—mine because I have found it, and every one else, as I like to believe, has forgotten it. Next it is a grove of big old trees. Would they not have been cut down years ago if any one had remembered them? And on the other side is a meadow whose thick grass, waist-high, ought to have been mowed last June and gathered into some dusky, fragrant barn. But it is forgotten, like the garden, and will go leisurely to seed out there in the sun; the autumn winds will sweep it and the winter snow will mat down its dried tangle.
Forgotten—and as I lie in the long grass, drowsy with the scent of the hedge and the phlox, I seem only a memory myself. If Istay too long I shall forget to go away, and no one will remember to find me. In truth, I feel not unwilling that it should be so. Could there be a better place? "Escaped from old gardens"! Ah, foolish, foolish flowers! If I had the happiness to be born in an old garden, I would not escape. I would stay there, and dream there, forever!
On a June day, years ago, I was walking along our country road. At the top of a steep little hill I paused to rest and let my eyes luxuriate in the billowing greens and tender blues of the valley below. While I stood there my neighbor came slowly up from the garden, her apron over her head, a basket of green peas on her arm.
"What a view you have up here on your hill!" I said.
She drew back her apron and turned to look off. "Yes," she said indulgently; "ye-e-s." Then her face brightened and she turned to me with real animation: "But it's better in winter when the leaves is off, 'n' you c'n see the passin' on the lower road."
Fresh from the city as I was, with all its prejudices and intolerance upon me, I was partly amused, partly irritated, by her answer. So all this glory of greenness, all this wonder ofthe June woodland, was merely tolerated, while the baffled observer waited for the leaves to be "off"! And all for the sake of seeing—what? A few lumber wagons, forsooth, loaded with ties for the railway, a few cows driven along morning and evening, a few children trudging to and from school, the postman's buggy on its daily rounds, twice a week the meat cart, once a week the grocery wagon, once a month the "tea-man," and now and then a neighbor's team on its way to the feed-store or the blacksmith's shop down at "the Corners."
For this, then,—not for the beauty of the winter landscape, but for this poor procession of wayfarers, my neighbors waited with impatience. If I could, I would have snatched up their view bodily and carried it off with me, back to my own farm for my own particular delectation. It should never again have shoved itself in their way.
But since that time I have lived longer in the country. If I have not made it my home for all twelve months, I have dwelt in it from early April to mid-December, and now, when I think of my neighbor's remark, it is with growingcomprehension. I realize that I, in my patronizing one-sidedness, was quite wrong.
City folk go to the country, as they say, to "get away"—justifiable enough, perhaps, or perhaps not. They seek spots remote from the centres; they choose deserted districts, untraveled roads; they criticize their ancestors unmercifully for their custom of building houses close to the road and keeping the front dooryard clear of shrubbery. But they who built those homes which are our summer refuge did not want to get away; they wanted to get together. The country was not their respite, it was their life, and the road was to them the emblem of race solidarity—nay, more than the emblem, it was the means to it. This is still the case with the country people, and as I live among them I am coming to a realization of the meaning of the Road.
In the city one can never get just this. There are streets, of course, but by their very multiplicity and complexity they lose their individual impressiveness and are merged in that great whole, the City. One recoils from them and takes refuge in the sense of one's own home.
But in the country there is just the Road. Recoil from it? One's heart goes out to it. The road is a part of home, the part that reaches out to our friends and draws them to us or brings us to them. It is our outdoor clubhouse, it is the avenue of the Expected and the Unexpected, it is the Home Road.
In a sense it does no more for us, and in some ways much less, than our city streets do. Along these, too, our tradesmen's carts come to our doors, along these our friends must fare as they arrive or depart; we seek the streets at our outgoings and our incomings. But they are, after all, strictly a means. We use them, but when we enter our homes we forget them, or try to. Our individual share in the street is not large. So much goes on and goes by that has only the most general bearing on our interests that we cease to give it our attention at all. It is not good form to watch the street, because it is not worth while. When children's voices fly in at our windows, we assume that they are other people's children, and they usually are. When we hear teams, we expect them to go by, and they usually do. When we hear a cab door slam, we take it for grantedthat it is before some other house, and usually it is. And if, having nothing better to do, we perchance walk to the window and glance out between the curtains, we are repaid by seeing nothing interesting and by feeling a little shamefaced besides.
Not so in the country. What happens along the Road is usually our intimate concern. Most of those who go by on it are our own acquaintances and neighbors, and are interesting assuch. The rest are strangers, and interesting as such. For it is the rarity of the stranger that gives him his piquancy.
And so in the country it is both good form and worth while to watch the Road—to "keep an eye out," as they say. When Jonathan and I first came to the farm, we were incased in a hard incrustation of city ways. When teams passed, we did not look up; when a wagon rattled, we did not know whose it was, and we said we did not care. When one of our neighbors remarked, casually, "Heard Bill Smith's team go by at half-past eleven last night. Wonder if the's anythin' wrong down his way," we stared at one another in amazement, and wondered, "Now, how in theworld did he know it was Bill Smith's team?" We smiled over the story of a postmistress who had the ill luck to be selling stamps when a carriage passed. She hastily shoved them out, and ran to the side window—too late! "Sakes!" she sighed; "that's the second I've missed to-day!" We smiled, but I know now that if I had been in that postmistress's place I should have felt exactly as she did.
When we began to realize the change in ourselves, we were at first rather sheepish and apologetic about it. We fell into the way of sitting where we could naturally glance out of the windows, but we did this casually, as if by chance, and said nothing about it. When August came, and dusk fell early and lamps were lighted at supper-time, I drew down the shades.
But one night Jonathan said, carelessly, "Why do you pull them all the way down?"
"Why not?" I asked, with perhaps just a suspicion.
"Oh," he said, "it always seems so cheerful from the road to look in at a lighted window."
I left them up, but I noticed that Jonathankept a careful eye on the shadowy road outside. Was he trying to cheer it by pleasant looks, I wondered, or was he just trying to see all that went by?
Jonathan's seat is not so good as mine for observation. A big deutzia bush looms between his window and the road, while at my window only the tips of a waxberry bush obscure the view, and there is a door beside me. Therefore Jonathan was distinctly at a disadvantage. He offered to change seats, suggesting that there was a draft where I was, and that the light was bad for my eyes, but I found that I did not mind either of these things.
One day a team passed while Jonathan was carving. He looked up too late, hesitated, then said, rather consciously: "Who was that? Did you see?"
"Idon't know," I said, with a far-away, impersonal air, as though the matter had no interest for me. But I hadn't the heart to keep up the pose, and I added: "Perhaps you'll know. It was a white horse, and a business wagon with red wheels, and the man wore a soft felt hat, and there was a dog on the seat beside him."
Before I had finished, Jonathan was grinning delightedly. "Suppose we shake these city ways," he said. He deliberately got up, raised the shades, pushed back a curtain, and moved a jug of goldenrod. "There! Can you see better now?" he asked.
And I said cheerfully, "Yes, quite a good deal better. And after this, Jonathan, when you hear a team coming, why don't you stop carving till it goes by?"
"I will," said Jonathan.
It was our final capitulation, and since then we have been much more comfortable. We run to the window whenever we feel inclined, and we leave our shades up at dusk without apology or circumlocution. We are coming to know our neighbors' teams by their sound, and we are proud of it. Why, indeed, should we be ashamed of this human interest? Why should we be elated that we can recognize a bluebird by his flight, and ashamed of knowing our neighbor's old bay by his gait? Why should we boast of our power to recognize the least murmur of the deceptive grosbeak, and not take pride in being able to "spot" Bill Smith's team by thepeculiar rattle of its board bottom as it crosses the bridge by the mill? Is he not of more value than many grosbeaks? But how can we love our neighbor if we do not pay some attention to him—him and his horse and his cart and all that is his? And how shall we pay attention to him if we neglect the opportunities of the Road, since for the rest he is busy and we are busy, and we belong each to our own farm?
I stopped at a friendly door one day to ask, "Have Phil and Jimmy gone by? I wanted to see them."
"No, I haven't seen them." The bright-faced little lady stood in the doorway glancing over my shoulder out toward the sunny road. "Have you seem them to-day, Nellie?" she called into the dusky sitting-room. "No," she turned back to me, "we haven't seen them. And," she added, with gay directness, "nobody could get by the housewithoutour seeing them; I'm sure of that!"
Her remark pleased me immensely. I like this frank interest in the Road very much. When I am at home, I have it myself, and I have stopped being ashamed of it. When Iam on the Road, I like to know that I am an object of interest to the dwellers in the houses I pass. I look up at the windows, whose tiny panes reflect the brightness of outdoors and tell me nothing of the life within, and I like to think that some one behind them knows that I am going by. Often there is some sign of recognition—a motion of the hand through a parted curtain, or rarely a smiling face; now and then some one looks out from a doorway to send a greeting, or glances up from the garden or the well; but even without these tokens I still have the sense of being noticed, and I find it pleasant and companionable. In the city, when I go to see a friend, I approach a house that gives no sign. I mount to a noncommittal vestibule and push an impersonal button, and after the other necessary preliminaries I find my friends. In the country as I drive up to the house I notice curtains stirring, I hear voices, and before I have had time to get out and find the hitch-rope every person in the house is either at the gate or standing in the doorway. Our visit is begun before we have left the Road, the hospitable, social Road. Such ways would probably notdo for the city. So much the worse for the city. The country ways are best.
Everything that happens along the Road has the social touch. In the city, orders are given by telephone, and when the delivery wagon comes, it sweeps up with a rush, the boy seizes a basket and jumps out, runs to the back door, shouts the name of the owner, slams down his goods, and dashes back to the wagon, with a crisp "Git-up!" to the well-trained horse, who starts forward while his driver is still mounting to his seat.
Not so in the country. The wagon draws peacefully out to the side of the Road, and the horse falls to nibbling grass if he is unchecked, or to browsing on my rosebushes if he is not. If it is the grocer's wagon, the boy comes around to the back porch and we discuss what supplies will probably be needed by the time of his next visit. Incidentally, we talk about weather and crops and woodchucks and trout, or bass or partridges, according to the season. If it is the meat cart or the fish wagon, I seize a platter and go out, the back flap of the cart is lifted up, I step under its shade and peer in, considering what is offeredme and deciding what I will have plucked out for me to carry back to the house.
Besides the routine visitors, there are others—peddlers with wonderful collections of things to sell (whole clothing shops or furniture stores some of them bring with them), peddlers with books, peddlers with silver, peddlers with jewelry. In the course of a few months one is offered everything from shoe-strings to stoves. There are men who want to buy, too,—buyers of old iron, of old rags, of old rubber. "Anny-ting, anny-ting vat you vill sell me, madame, I vill buy it," said one, with outspread hands.
Cattle go by, great droves of them, being driven along the Road and sold from farm to farm until all are gone. I love the day that brings them. A dust haze down the Road, the mooing of cows and the baaing of calves, the shouts of the drovers, the sound of many hoofs, and the cattle are here. The farmer and the "hired man" leave their work and saunter out to the Road to "look 'em over," the children come running out to watch the pretty creatures, sleek or tousled, soft-eyed or wild-eyed, yearlings with bits of horns, stockytwo-year-olds, and wabbly-legged youngsters hardly able to keep pace with the rest, all of them glad enough of the chance to pause in the shade and nibble at the rich, cool grass. One or two of the "critters" are approved of, perhaps, and bought, and the rest move on, the sunny dust haze rises and clears, the shouts of the drovers grow faint, and the Road is still again.
Men go by looking for work; they will clean your well for you, they will file your horses' teeth for you, they will mend your umbrellas and repair your clocks and sharpen your scissors. In the city, when we hear the scissors-grinder ding-ding-dinging along the street, we wonder in an impersonal way how he makes a living; but in the country we espy him from afar and are out at the gate to meet him, with all the scissors and knives in the house.
There are tramps, too, of course. Not the kind one finds near cities, or in crowded summer watering-places. Our Road does not lead to Rome, at least not very directly, and the tramp who chooses it is sure to be a mild and unenterprising creature, a desultorytramp who does not really know his business. Some of the same ones come back year after year, and, in defiance of modern sociological science, we offer them the hospitality of the back porch with sandwiches and coffee, while we exchange the commonplaces of the season. It is the custom of the Road.
And so the procession of the Road moves on. If we wait long enough—and it is not so long either—everything goes by: gay wedding parties, christening parties, slow funerals, the Road bears them all; and to those who live beside it nothing is alien, nothing indifferent. Throughout the week the daytime is for business—remembering always that on the country Road business is never merely business, but always sociability too; the early evening is for pleasure; the night is for rest, for that stillness that cities never know, broken only when human necessity most sharply importunes, in the crises of birth, of death. On Sundays all the world drives to church, or sits on its doorstep and watches the rest. And Sunday and week days alike, every one's interest goes out to the Road.
I venture to say that when we think of our city homes we think of their interiors, but when we think of our farmhouse homes we think of the Road as well. They are like little islands in a river,—one remembers them together. For the Road is a river—a river of life. Most of our words about roads imply motion. A road comes, we say, and it goes, it sweeps, it curves, it climbs, it descends, it rises and drops, it bends and turns. And, in fact, it means movement, it is always bringing life and taking it again, or if for a time it does neither, it is always inviting, always promising. We have all felt it. As we are whirled along in a railway train even, the thing that stirs our imagination is the roads, the paths. I can still remember glimpses of these that I had years ago—a footpath over a rounded hilltop through long yellow grass, a rough logging-road beside a foaming mountain river, a brushy wood road leading through bars into deep shade, a country road at dusk, curving past a low farmhouse with lights in the windows. I could never follow these roads, but I remember them still, and still they allure me.
Our Road, as it flows placidly past our farm, suggests nothing very exciting or spectacular. It is a pretty bit of road, rounding a rocky corner of the farm and leading past the old house under cool depths of maple shade, out again into a broad space of sunlight, dropping over a little hill, around a curve, and out of sight. I know it well, of course, every rock and flower of it, but its final appeal to me is not through its beauty, it is not even through my sense of ownership in it; it is simply that it is a Road—a road that leads out of Everywhere into Everywhere Else, a road that goes on. About a road that ends there is no glamour. It may be pretty or useful, but as a road it is a failure. For the Road is the symbol of endless possibility. From the faintest footpath across a meadow, where as a child one has always felt that some elf or gnomemayappear, or along which, if one were to wander with sufficient negligence, onemightbe led into the realm of "faerie" to the broad turnpike which fares through open country, plunges through the surging cities, and escapes to broad lands beyond—any path, any road, makes this appeal. And solong as one has faith that what may be is more than what is, so long as one has the buoyant patience to await it or the will to go forth and seek it, so long as one has the imagination and the heart of the wayfarer, the charm of the Road will be potent.
Men have sung the praises of fishing and hunting, they have extolled the joys of boating and riding, they have dwelt at length upon the pleasures of automobiling. But there is one—sport, shall I call it?—which no one seems to have thought worth mentioning: the gentle sport of berrying.
Perhaps calling it a sport is an unfortunate beginning; it gives us too much to live up to. No, it is not a sport, though I can't think why, since it is quite as active as drop-line fishing. Perhaps the trouble is with the game—the fish are more active than the berries, and their excesses cover the deficiencies of the stolid figure in the boat.
What, then, shall we call it? Not an occupation; it is too desultory for that; nor an amusement, because of a certain tradition of usefulness that hangs about it. Probably it belongs in that small but select group ofthings that people do ostensibly because they are useful but really because they are fun. At any rate, it does not matter how we class it,—it is just berrying.
But not strawberrying. Strawberries are so far down, and so few! They cannot be picked with comfort by any one over six years old.
Nor blackberrying! Blackberries are good when gathered in, but in the gathering process there is nothing restful or soothing. They always grow in hot places, and the briers make you cross; they pull your hair and "sprout" your clothes and scratch your wrists. And the berries stain your fingers dark blue, and, moreover, they are frequented by those unpleasant little triangular, greenish-brown creatures known as squash bugs, which I do not believe even the Ancient Mariner could have been called upon to love. No, I do not mean blackberrying.
What then? What indeed but huckleberrying! How can I adequately sing the praises of the gentle, the neat, the comfortable huckleberry! No briers, no squash bugs, no back-breaking stoop or arm-rending stretch toreach them. Just a big, bushy, green clump, full of glossy black or softly blue berries, and you can sit right down on the tussocks among them, put your pail underneath a bush, and begin. At first, the handfuls drop in with a high-keyed "plinking" sound; then, when the "bottom is covered," this changes to a soft patter altogether satisfactory; and as you sit stripping the crisp branches and letting the neat little balls roll through your fingers, your spirit grows calm within you, you feel the breeze, you look up now and then over stretches of hill, or pasture, or sky, and you settle into a state of complete acquiescence in things as they are.
For there is always a breeze, and always a view, at least where my huckleberries grow. If any one should ask me where to find a good situation for a house, I should answer, with a comprehensive wave of my arm, "Oh, choose any huckleberry patch." Only 'twere pity to demolish so excellent a thing as a huckleberry patch, merely to erect so doubtful a thing as a house.
I know one such—a royal one even among huckleberry patches. To get to it you go upan old road,—up, and up, and up,—you pass big fields, newmown and wide open to the sky, you get broader and broader outlooks over green woodland and blue rolling hills, with a bit of azure river in the midst. You come out on great flats of rock, thinly edged with light turf, and there before you are the "berry lots," as the natives call them,—rolling, windy uplands, with nothing bigger than cedars and wild cherry trees to break their sweep. The berry bushes crowd together in thick-set patches, waist-high, interspersed with big "high-bush" shrubs in clumps or alone, low, hoary juniper, and great, dark masses of richly glossy, richly fragrant bay. The pointed cedars stand about like sentinels, stiff enough save where their sensitive tops lean delicately away from the wind. In the scant herbage between is goldenrod, the earliest and the latest alike at home here, and red lilies and asters, and down close to the ground, if you care to stoop for them, trailing vines of dewberries with their fruit, the sweetest of all the blackberries. Truly it is a goodly prospect, and one to fill the heart with satisfaction that the world is as it is.
The pleasure of huckleberrying is partly in the season—the late summer-time, from mid-July to September. The poignant joys of early spring are passed, and the exuberance of early summer, while the keen stimulus of fall has not yet come. Things are at poise. The haying is over, the meadows, shorn of their rich grass, lie tawny-green under the sky, and the world seems bigger than before. It is not a time for dreams nor a time for exploits; it is a time for—for—well, for berrying!
But you must choose your days carefully, as you do your fishing and hunting days. The berries "bite best" with a brisk west wind, though a south one is not to be despised, and a north one gives a pleasant suggestion of fall while the sun has still all the fervor of summer. Choose a sky that has clouds in it, too, for you will feel their movement even when you do not look up. Then take your pail and set out. Do not be in a hurry and do not promise to be back at any definite time. Either go alone or with just the right companion. I do not know any circumstances wherein the choice of a companion needs more care than in berrying. It may make or marthe whole adventure. For you must have a person not too energetic, or a standard of speed will be established that will spoil everything; nor too conscientious—it is maddening to be told that you have not picked the bushes clean enough; nor too diligent, so that one feels guilty if one looks at the view or acknowledges the breeze; nor too restless, so that one is being constantly haled to fresh woods and pastures new. A slightly garrulous person is not bad, with a desultory, semi-philosophic bent, and a gift for being contented with easy physical occupation. In fact, I find that I am, by exclusion and inclusion, narrowing my description to fit a certain type of small boy. And indeed I believe that here the ideal companion is to be found,—if indeed he is not, as I more than suspect he is, the ideal companion for every form of recreation in life. Yes, the boy is the thing. Some of my choicest hours in the berry lots have been spent with a boy as companion, some boy who loves to be in the wind and sun without knowing that he loves it, who philosophizes without knowing that he does so, who picks berries with sufficient diligence sometimes,and with a delightful irresponsibility at other times; who likes to move on, now and then, but is happy to kick turf around the edges of the clump if you are inclined to stay. Who takes pride in filling his pail, but is not so desperately single-minded that he is unmoved by the seductions of goldenrod in bloom, of juniper and bayberries, of dry goldenrod stalks (for kite sticks), of deserted birds' nests, and all the other delights that fall in his way.
For berrying does not consist chiefly in getting berries, any more than fishing consists chiefly in getting fish, or hunting in getting birds. The essence of berrying is the state of mind that accompanies it. It is a semi-contemplative recreation, providing physical quiet with just enough motion to prevent restlessness—being, in this respect, like "whittling." I said semi-contemplative, because, while it seems to induce meditation, the beauty of it is that you don't really meditate at all, you only think you are doing so, or are going to. That is what makes it so recuperative in its effects. It just delicately shaves the line between stimulating you tothought and boring you because it does not stimulate. Thus it brings about in you a perfect state of poise most restful in itself and in a complete harmony with the midsummer season.
Yes, fishing is good, and hunting is good, and all the sports are good in their turn—even sitting in a rocking-chair on a boarding-house piazza has, perhaps, its charms and its benefits for some;—but when the sun is hot and the wind is cool, when the hay is in and the yellowing fields lie broad, when the woods have gathered their birds and their secrets to their very hearts, when the sky is deeply, warmly blue, and the clouds pile soft or float thin and light, then give me a pail and let me wander up, up, to the great open berry lots. I will let the sun shine on me and the wind blow me, and I will love the whole big world, and I will think not a single thought, and at sundown I will come home with a full pail and a contentedly empty mind.
It was raining. It had begun to rain the afternoon before; it had rained all night, with the drizzling, sozzling kind of rain that indicated persistence. It had rained all the morning; it was obviously going to rain all day. The hollow beside the stone hitching-post, where the grocer's horse and the butcher's horse and the fishman's horse had stamped, all through the drought, was now a pool of brown water, with the raindrops making gooseflesh on it. There was another pond under the front gate, and another under the hammock; and the middle of the road, in the horse rut, was a narrow brown brook. The tiger lilies in the old stump were bending with their load of wetness, the phlox in the garden was weighed down till its white masses nearly touched earth. Indoors, when the wind lulled and the rain fell straighter, we could hear the drops tick-tick-ticking on the bark ofthe birch logs in the fireplace. This flue of the chimney is almost vertical, with a slant to the southward, and I have always liked the way it lets in samples of the weather—a patch of yellow sunshine on clear days, a blur of soft white light on gray ones, and on stormy ones flicks of rain to make the fire sputter, or, as on this particular day, to dampen our kindling if it has been laid ready to light.
The belated postman's buggy, with presumably a postman inside it somewhere behind the sheathing of black rubber, drove up, our mail-box grated open and shut, and the streaming horse sloshed on. Jonathan turned up his collar and dashed out to the box, and dashed in again, bringing with him a great gust of rainy sweetness and the smell of wet woolen.
"Jonathan," I said, "let's take a walk."
He was unfolding the damp newspaper carefully so as not to tear it. "What's that? Walk?"
"That's what I said."
He had his paper open by this time, and was glancing at the headlines. When a manis glancing at headlines, it is just as well to let him glance. I gave him fifteen minutes. Then I reopened the matter.
"Jonathan, I said walk."
"What's that?" His tone was vague. It was what I call his newspaper tone. It suggests extreme remoteness, but tolerance, even benevolence, if he is let alone. He drifted slowly over to the window and made a pretense of looking out, but his eyes were still running down the columns. "My dear," he remarked, still in the same tone, "had you noticed that it is beginning to rain?"
"I noticed that yesterday afternoon, about three o'clock," I said.
"Oh, all right. I thought perhaps you hadn't."
"Well?" I waited.
"Well—" he hung fire while he finished the tail of the editorial. Then he threw down the paper. "Don't you think it's rather poor weather for walking?"
This was what I had been waiting for, and I responded glibly, "Some one has said there is no such thing as bad weather, there are only good clothes."
"Do you mean mine?" He grinned down at his farm regimentals.
"Well, then—"
"Why, of course, if you really mean it," he said, and added, as he looked out reflectively at the puddling road, "You'll get your hair wet."
"Hope so! Now, Jonathan, aren't you silly, really? Anybody would think we'd never been for a walk in the rain before in our lives. Perhaps you'd rather stay indoors and be a tabby-cat and keep dry."
"Who got the mail?"
"You did. But you wanted the paper—and you ran."
The fact was, as I very well knew, Jonathan really wanted to go, but he didn't want to start. When people really enjoy doing a thing, and mean to do it, and yet won't get going, something has to be done to get them going. That was why I spoke of tabby-cats.
Jonathan assumed an alert society tone. "I should enjoy a walk very much, thank you," he said; "the weather seems to me perfect. But," he added abruptly, "wear woolen; that white thing won't do.">
"Of course!" I went off and made myself fit—woolen for warmth, though the day was not cold, a short khaki skirt, an old felt hat, and old shoes. Out we went into the drenched world. Whish! A gust of rain in my eyes half blinded me, and I ran under the big maples. I heard Jonathan chuckle. "I can't help it," I gasped; "I'll be wet enough in a few minutes, and then I shan't care."
From the maples I made for the lee of the barn eaves, disturbing the hens who were sulking there. They stepped ostentatiously out into the rainy barnyard with an air of pointedlynotnoticing me, but of knowing all the time whose fault it was. They weren't liking the weather, anyhow, the hens weren't, and showed it plainly in the wet, streaky droop of their feathers and the exasperated look in their red eyes. "Those hens look as if they thought I could do something about it if I only would," I said to Jonathan as we passed them.
"Yes, they aren't a cordial crowd. Here, we'll show them how to take weather!"
We were passing under an apple tree; Jonathanseized a drooping bough, and a sheet of water shook itself out on our shoulders. I gasped and ducked, and a hen who stood too near scuttered off with low duckings of indignation.
"Now you're really wet, you can enjoy yourself," said Jonathan; and there was something in it, though I was loath to admit it at the moment. A moment before I had felt rather appalled at the sight of the rain-swept lane; now I hastened on recklessly.
"I think," said Jonathan, "it's the back of my neck that counts. After that's wet I don't care what happens."
"Yes," I agreed, "that's a stronghold. But I think with me it's my shoulders."
It did not really matter which it was; neck and shoulders both were wet,—back, arms, everything. We tramped down across the hollow, over the brook, whose flood was backing up into the swamp on each side. I paused to look off across the huckleberry hillside beyond.
"How the rain changes everything!" I said.
All the colors had freshened and darkened, and the blur of the rain softened the pictureand "brought it together," as the painters say.
"Well," said Jonathan, "woods or open?"
"Which is the wettest?"
"Woods."
"Then woods."
And we plunged in under the big chestnuts, through a mass of witch-hazel and birch.
Jonathan was quite right. Woods were the wettest. One can hardly fancy anything quite so wet. Solid water, like a river, is not comparable, because it is all in one lump; you know where it is, and you can get out of it when you want to. But here in the woods the water was everywhere, ready to hurl itself upon us, from above, from beside us, from below. Every step, every motion, drew upon us drenching showers of great drops that had been hanging heavily in the leaves ready to break away at a touch. Little streamlets of water ran from the drooping edges of my hat and from my chin, water dashed in my eyes and I blinked it out.
Jonathan, pausing to hold back a dripping spray of blackberry, heavy with fruit, remarked, "Aren't you getting a little damp?"
"I wonder if I am!" I answered joyously, and plunged on into the next thicket.
There is as much exhilaration in being out in a big rain and getting really rained through, as there is in being out in surf. It has nothing in common with the sensations that arise when, umbrellaed and mackintoshed and rubber-overshoed, we pick our way gingerly along the street, wondering how much we can keep dry, hoping everything is "up" all round, wishing the wind wouldn't keep changing and blowing the umbrella so, and fancying how we shall look when we "get there." But when you don't care—when you want to get wet, and do—there is a physical glow that is delightful, a sense of being washed through and through, of losing one's identity almost, and being washed away into the great swirl of nature where one doesn't count much, but is glad to be taken in as a part. I fancy this is true with any of the elements—earth, air, water. The tale of Antæus was no mere legend; there is real strength for us in close contact with the earth. There is a purifying and uplifting potency in the winds, a potency in the waters—ocean and river and great rain.Our civilization has dealt with all these so successfully that we are apt to think of them as docile servants, or perhaps as petty annoyances, and we lose the sense of their power unless we deliberately go out to meet them in their own domain and let them have their way with us. Then, indeed, they sweep us out of ourselves for a season, and that is good.
We came out from the thickets on a high, brushy field, sheeted in fine rain that dimmed even the near wood edges. Blackberries grew thick, and we made our way carefully among the briers, following the narrow and devious cow-paths. Suddenly we both stopped. Just ahead of us, under a blackberry bush, was a huge snapping-turtle. He was standing on his hind legs, with his fore legs resting on a branch loaded with fruit, his narrow dark head stretched far up and out, while he quietly ate berry after berry. He was a handsome fellow, with his big black shell all brilliant in the wetness of the rain. As he worked we could see his under side, and notice how it shaded to yellow along the sutures. It was a scene of contentment, and the berries, drippingwith fresh raindrops, looked luscious indeed as he feasted.
We stood and watched him for a while, and I got an entirely new idea of turtles. Turtles usually have too much reserve, too much self-consciousness, too littleabandon, and I had never seen one so "come out of himself," literally and figuratively, as this fellow did. It made me want to follow up the acquaintance, this happy chance of finding him, so to speak, in his cups; but I repressed the desire, feeling that he might not share it, and we carefully backed away and went around by another path so as not to disturb the reveler. He never knew how much pleasure he had given as well as received.
Into the woods again— "Look out!" said Jonathan. "Don't step on the lizards!"
He stooped and picked up one, which struck an attitude among his dripping fingers—sleek back a little arched, legs in odd, uncouth positions, tail set stiffly in a queer curve. They are brilliant little creatures, with their clear orange-red coats, scarlet-spotted, like a trout.
"Pretty little chap, isn't he?" said Jonathan.
"Stylish," I said, "but foolish. They never do anything that I can see, except attitudinize.
"But they do a great deal of that," said Jonathan, as he set him gently down.
"Come on," I said; "I can't stand here being sentimental over your pets. It's raining.
"Oh, if you'd like togo—" said Jonathan, and set a pace.
I followed hard, and we raced down through the empty woods, sliding over the great wet rocks, rolling over black fallen tree trunks, our feet sinking noiselessly in the soft leaf mould of the forest floor. Out again, and through the edge of a cornfield where the broad, wavy ribbon leaves squeaked as we thrust them aside, as only corn leaves can squeak. If we had not been wet already, this would have finished us. There is nothing any wetter than a wet cornfield.
On over the open pastures, with a grassy swamp at the bottom. We tramped carelessly through it, not even looking for tussocks, and the water sucked merrily in and out of our shoes. Into brush once more—thickhazel and scrub oak; then down a slope, and we were in the hemlock ravine—a wonderful bit of tall woods, dark-shadowed, solemn, hardly changed by the rain, only perhaps a thought darker and stiller, with deeper blue depths of hazy distance between the straight black trunks. At the bottom a brook with dark pools lying beneath mossy rock ledges, or swirling under great hemlock roots, little waterfalls, and shallow rapids over smooth-worn rock faces. It is a wonderful place, a place for a German fairy tale.
The woods were empty—in a sense, yes. Except for the lizards, the animals run to cover during the rain; woodchucks, rabbits, squirrels, are tucked away somewhere out of sight and sound. Bird notes are hushed; the birds, lurking close-reefed under the lee of the big branches or the heavy foliage, or at the heart of the cedar trees, make no sign as we pass.
Empty, yet not lonely. When the sun is out and the sky is high and bright, one feels that the world is a large place, belonging to many creatures. But when the sky shuts down and the world is close-wrapped in rain anddrifting mist, it seems to grow smaller and more intimate. Instead of feeling the multitudinousness of the life of woods and fields, one feels its unity. We are brought together in the bonds of the rain—we and all the hidden creatures—we seem all in one room together.
Thus swept into the unity of a dominating mood, the woods sometimes gain a voice of their own. I heard it first on a stormy night when I was walking along the wood road to meet Jonathan. It was a night of wind and rain and blackness—blackness so dense that it seemed a real thing, pressing against my eyes, so complete that at the fork in the roads I had to feel with my hand for the wheel ruts in order to choose the right one. As I grew accustomed to the swish of the rain in my face and the hoarse breath of the wind about my ears I became aware of another sound—a background of tone. I thought at first it was a child calling, but no, it was not that; it was not a call, but a song; and not that either—it was more like many voices, high but not shrill, and very far away, softly intoning. It was neither sad nor joyous; it suggesteddreamy, reiterant thoughts; it was not music, but the memory of music. If one listened too keenly, it was gone, like a faint star which can be glimpsed only if one looks a little away from it.
As I had listened that night I began to wonder if it was all my own fancy, and when I met Jonathan I made him stop.
"Wait a minute," I begged him, "and listen."
"I hear it. Come on," he had said. Supper was in his thoughts.
"What do you hear?"
"Just what you do."
"What's that?" I had persisted, as we fumbled our way along.
"Voices—I don't know what you'd call it—the woods. It often sounds like that in a big rain."
Jonathan's matter-of-factness had rather pleased me.
"I thought it might be my imagination. I'm glad it wasn't," I said.
"Perhaps it's both our imaginations," he suggested.
"No. We both do lots of imagining, butit never overlaps. When it does, it shows it's so."
Perhaps I was not very clear, but he seemed to understand.
Since then I have heard it now and again, this singing of the rain-swept woods. Not often, for it is a capricious thing, or perhaps I ought rather to say I do not understand the manner of its uprising. Rain alone will not bring it to pass, wind alone will not, and sometimes even when they are importuned by wind and rain together the woods are silent. Perhaps, too, it is not every stretch of woods that can sing, or at all seasons. In winter they can whistle, and sigh, and creak, but I am sure that when I have heard these singing voices the trees have always had their full leafage. But however it comes about, I am glad of the times that I have heard it. And whenever I read tales of the Wild Huntsman and all his kind, there come into my mind as an interpreting background memories of wonderful black nights and storm-ridden woods swept by overtones of distant and elusive sound.
We did not hear the woods sing that day. Perhaps there was not wind enough, or perhapsthe woods on the "home piece" are not big enough, for it chances that I have never heard the sound there.
As we came up the lane at dusk we saw the glimmer of the house lights.
"Doesn't that look good?" I said to Jonathan. "And won't it be good when we are all dry and in front of the fire and you have your pipe and I'm making toast?"
I am perfectly sure that Jonathan agreed with me, but what he said was, "I thought you came out for pleasure."
"Well, can't I come home for pleasure too?" I asked.
Jonathan had taken me to see the "bee tree" down in the "old John Lane lot." Judging from the name, the spot must have been a clearing at one time, but now it is one of the oldest pieces of woodland in the locality. The bee tree, a huge chestnut, cut down thirty years ago for its store of honey, is sinking back into the forest floor, but we could still see its hollow heart and charred sides where the fire had been made to smoke out the bees.
"Jonathan," I said, "I'd like to find some wild honey. It sounds so good."
"No better than tame honey," said Jonathan.
"It sounds better. I'm sure it would be different scooped out of a tree like this than done up neatly in pound squares."
"Tastes just the same," persisted Jonathan prosaically.
"Well, anyway, I want to find a bee tree. Let's go bee-hunting!"
"What's the use? You don't know a honeybee from a bumblebee."
"Well, you do, of course," I answered, tactfully.
Jonathan, mollified, became gracious. "I never went bee-hunting, but I've heard the old fellows tell how it's done. But it takes all day."
"So much the better," I said.
And that night I looked through our books to find out what I could about bees. Over the fireplace in what was once the "best parlor" is a long, low cupboard with glass doors. Here Bibles, albums, and a few other books have always been stored, and from this I pulled down a fat, gilt-lettered volume called "The Household Friend." This book has something to say about almost everything, and, sure enough, it had an article on bees. But the Household Friend had obviously never gone bee-hunting, and the only real information I got was that bees had four wings and six legs.
"So has a fly," said Jonathan, when I came to him with this nugget of wisdom.
The neighbors gave suggestions. "You want to go when the yeller-top's in bloom," said one.
"Yellow-top?" I questioned, stupidly enough.
"Yes. Yeller-top—'t's in bloom now," with a comprehensive wave of the hand.
"Oh, you mean goldenrod!"
"Well, I guess you call it that. Yeller-top we call it. You find one o' them old back fields where the yeller-top's come in, 'n' you'll see bees 'nough."
Another friend told us that when we had caught our bee we must drop honey on her back. This would send her to the hive to get her friends to groom her off, and they would all return with her to see where the honey came from. This sounded improbable, but we were in no position to criticize our information.
As to the main points of procedure all our advisers agreed. We were to put honey in an open box, catch a bee in it, and when she had loaded up with honey, let her go, watch her flight and locate the direction of her home. When she returned with friends for morehoney, we were to shut them in, carry the box on in the line of flight, and let them go again. We were to keep this up until we reached the bee tree. It sounded simple.
We got our box—two boxes, to be sure of our resources—baited them with chunks of comb, and took along little window panes for covers. Then we packed up luncheon and set out for an abandoned pasture in our woods where we remembered the "yeller-top" grew thick. Our New England fall mornings are cool, and as we walked up the shady wood road Jonathan predicted that it would be no use to hunt bees. "They'll be so stiff they can't crawl. Look at that lizard, now!" He stooped and touched a little red newt lying among the pebbles of the roadway. The little fellow seemed dead, but when Jonathan held him in the hollow of his hand for a few moments he gradually thawed out, began to wriggle, and finally dropped through between his fingers and scampered under a stone. "See?" said Jonathan. "We'll have to thaw out every bee just that way."
But I had confidence that the sun would take the place of Jonathan's hand, and refusedto give up my hunt. From the main log-road we turned off into a path, once a well-trodden way to the old ox pastures, but now almost overgrown, and pushed on through brier and sweet-fern and huckleberry and young birch, down across a little brook, and up again to the "old Sharon lot," a long field framed in big woods and grown up to sumac and brambles and goldenrod. It was warmer here, in the steady sunshine, sheltered from the crisp wind by the tree walls around us, and we began to look about hopefully for bees. At first Jonathan's gloomy prognostications seemed justified—there was not a bee in sight. A few wasps were stirring, trailing their long legs as they flew. Then one or two "yellow jackets" appeared, and some black-and-white hornets. But as the field grew warmer it grew populous, bumblebees hummed, and finally some little soft brown bees arrived—surely the ones we wanted. Cautiously Jonathan approached one, held his box under the goldenrod clump, brought the glass down slowly from above—and the bee was ours. She was a gentle little thing, and did not seem to resent her treatment at all, but droppeddown on to the honeycomb and fell to work. Jonathan had providently cut a three-forked stick, and he now stuck this into the ground and set the box on the forks so that it was about on a level with the goldenrod tops. Then he carefully drew off the glass, and we sat down to watch.
"Shouldn't you think she must have had enough?" I said, after a while—"Oh! there she comes now!"
Our bee appeared on the edge of the box, staggering heavily. She rubbed her legs, rubbed her wings, shook herself, girded up her loins, as it were, and brushed the hair out of her eyes, and finally rose, turning on herself in a close spiral which widened into larger and larger circles above the box, and at length, after two or three wide sweeps where we nearly lost track of her, she darted off in a "bee-line" for a tall chestnut tree on a knoll to the westward.
"Will she come back?" we wondered. Five minutes—ten—fifteen—it seemed an hour.
"She must have been a drone," said Jonathan.
"Or maybe she wasn't a honeybee at all," I suggested, gloomily. "She might be just another kind of hornet—no, look! There she is!"
I could hardly have been more thrilled if my fairy godmother had appeared on the goldenrod stalk and waved her wand at me. To think that the bee really did play the game! I knelt and peered in over the side of the box. Yes, there she was, all six feet in the honey, pumping away with might and main through her little red tongue, or proboscis, or whatever it was. We sank back among the weeds and waited for her to go. As she rose, in the same spirals, and disappeared westward, Jonathan said, "If she doesn't bring another one back with her this time, we'll try dropping honey on her back. You wait here and be a landmark for the bee while I try to catch another one in the other box."
I settled down comfortably under the yellow-top, and instantly I realized what a pleasant thing it is to be a landmark. For one thing, when you sit down in a field you get a very different point of view from that when you stand. Goldenrod is different looked at from beneath, with sky beyond it; sky is differentseen through waving masses of yellow. Moreover, when you sit still outdoors, the life of things comes to you; when you are moving yourself, it evades you. Down among the weeds where I sat, the sun was hot, but the breeze was cool, and it brought to me, now the scent of wild grapes from an old stone wall, now the spicy fragrance of little yellow apples on a gnarled old tree in the fence corner, now the sharp tang of the goldenrod itself. The air was full of the hum of bees, and soon I began to distinguish their different tones—the deep, rich drone of the bumblebees, the higher singsong of the honeybees, the snarl of the yellow-jacket, the jerky, nasal twang of the black-and-white hornet. They began to come close around me; two bumblebees hung on a frond of goldenrod so close to my face that I could see the pollen dust on their fur. Crickets and grasshoppers chirped and trilled beside me. All the little creatures seemed to have accepted me—all but one black-and-white hornet, who left his proper pursuits, whatever they may have been, to investigate me. He buzzed all around me in an insistent, ill-bred way that was annoying.He examined my neck and hair with unnecessary thoroughness, flew away, returned to begin all over again, flew away and returned once more; but at last even he gave up the matter and went off about his business.
Butterflies came fluttering past me:—big, rust-colored ones pointed in black; pale russet and silver ones; dancing little yellow ones; big black ones with blue-green spots, rather shabby and languid, as at the end of a gay season. Darning-needles darted back and forth, with their javelin-like flight, or mounted high by sudden steps, or lighted near me, with that absolute rigidity that is the positive negation of movement. A flying grasshopper creeping along through the tangle at my feet rose and hung flutteringly over one spot, for no apparent reason, and then, for no better reason, dropped suddenly and was still. A big cicada with green head and rustling wings worked his way clumsily among a pile of last year's goldenrod stalks, freed himself, and whirred away with the harsh, strident buzz that dominates every other sound while it lasts, and when it ceases makes the world seem wonderfully quiet.
Our bee had gone and come twice before Jonathan returned. "Hasn't she brought anybody yet? Well, here goes!" He took a slender stem of goldenrod, smeared it with honey, and gently lodged a drop on the bee's back, just where she could not by any possible antics get it off for herself. When the little thing flew she fairly reeled under her burden, tumbled down on to a leaf, recovered herself, and at last flew off on her old line.
"Now, let's go and cook luncheon," said Jonathan, "and leave her to work it out."
"But how can I move? I'm a landmark."
"Oh, leave your handkerchief. Anything white will do."
So I tied my handkerchief to a goldenrod stalk, and we went back to the brook. We made a fire on a flat stone, under which we could hear the brook running, broiled our chops on long, forked sticks, broiled some "beef-steak" mushrooms that we had found on a chestnut stump, and ended with water from the spring under the giant birch tree. Blue jays came noisily to investigate us; a yellow-hammer floated softly down to the branchoverhead, gave a little purring cluck of surprise, and flew off again, with a flare of tawny-yellow wings. In the warmth of the Indian summer noon the shade of the woods was pleasant, and I let Jonathan go back to the bees while I lay on a dry slope above the brook and watched the slim, tall chestnuts swaying in the wind. It is almost like being at sea to lie in the woods and look up at the trees. Their waving tops seem infinitely far away, but the sky beyond seems very near, and one can almost feel the earth go round.
As I lay there I heard a snapping of twigs and rustling of leaves. It was the wrong direction for Jonathan, and I turned gently, expecting nothing smaller than a deer—for deer are growing plentiful now in old New England—and met the shameless face of a jerky little red squirrel! He clung to a chestnut trunk and examined me, twitching all over the while, then whisked himself upside down and looked at me from that standpoint, mounted to a branch, clung to the under side and looked again, pretended fright and vanished behind the limb, only to peer over it the next moment to see what I looked like from there—all thetime clucking and burring like an alarm clock under a pillow.
The rude thing had broken the spell of quiet, and I got up, remembering the bees, and wandered back to the sunny field, now palpitating with waves of heat. Jonathan was nowhere to be seen, but as I approached the box I discovered him beside it flat on his back among the weeds.
"Sh-h-h," he warned, "don't frighten them. There were a lot of them when I got here and I've been watching their line. They all go straight for that chestnut."
"What are you lying down for?" I asked.
"I had to. I nearly twisted my neck off following their circles. I'm no owl."
I sat down near by and we watched a few more go, while others began to arrive.
"That dab of honey did the work," said Jonathan. "We might as well begin to follow up their line now."
Waiting till there were a dozen or more in the box, he gently slid on the glass cover, laid a paper over it to darken it, and we set out. Ten minutes' walking brought us past the big chestnut and out to a little clearing. Jonathanset the box down on a big rock where it would show up well, laid a handkerchief beside it, drew off the glass, and crouched. A bunch of excited bees burst out and away, without noticing their change of place. "They'll never find their way back there," said Jonathan regretfully; "they'll go straight back to the Sharon lot."
But there were others in the box, still feeding, who had not been disturbed by the move, and these he touched with honey drops. They staggered off, one by one, orienting themselves properly as they rose, and taking the same old line off to the westward. This was disappointing. We had hoped to see them turn back, showing that we had passed their home tree. However, there was nothing to do but sit and wait for them. In six minutes they began to come back, in twos and threes—evidently the honey drops on their shoulders had told the hive a sufficiently alluring story. Again we waited until the box was well filled with them, then closed it and went on westward. Two more moves brought us to a half-cleared ridge from which we could see out across country. To the westward, and sadlynear, was the end of the big woods and the beginning of pastures and farmland.
Jonathan scrutinized the farms dotting the slopes. "See that bunch of red barns with a white house?" he said "That's Bill Morehead's. He keeps bees. Bet we've got bees from his hive and they'll lead us plumb into his back yard."
It did begin to seem probable, and we took up our box in some depression of spirits. Two more stops, the bees still perversely flying westward, and we emerged in pastures.
"Here's our last stop," said Jonathan. "If they don't go back into that edge we've just left, they're Morehead's. There isn't another bit of woods big enough to hold a bee tree for seven miles to the west of us."
There was no rock to set the box on, so we lay down on the turf; Jonathan set the box on his chest, and partly slid the cover. He had by this time learned the trick of making the bees, even the excited ones, come out singly. We watched each one as she escaped, circle above us, circle, circle against the clear blue of the afternoon sky, then dart off—alas!—westward. As the last one flew wesat up, disconsolately, and gazed across the pasture.
"Tame bees!" muttered Jonathan, in a tone of grief and disgust. "Tame bees, down there in my old woodlots. It's trespass!"
"You might claim some of Morehead's honey," I suggested, "since you've been feeding his bees. But, then," I reflected, "it wouldn't be wild honey, and what I wanted was wild honey."
We rose dejectedly, and Jonathan picked up the box. "Aren't you going to leave it for the bees?" I asked. "They'll be so disappointed when they come back."
"They aren't the only ones to be disappointed," he remarked grimly. "Here, we'll have mushrooms for supper, anyway." And he stooped to collect a big puff-ball.
We walked home, our spirits gradually rising. After all, it is hard to stay depressed under a blue fall sky, with a crisp wind blowing in your face and the sense of completeness that comes of a long day out of doors. And as we climbed the last long hill to the home farm we could not help feeling cheerful.
"Bee-hunting is fun," I said, "even if they are tame bees."
"It's the best excuse for being a loafer that I've found yet," said Jonathan; "I wonder the tramps don't all go into the business."
"And some day," I pursued hopefully, "we'll go again and find really wild bees and really wild honey."
"It would taste just the same, you know," jeered Jonathan.
And I was so content with life that I let him have the last word.