Florj of Michi^iin. Sruin' at Mkiikian H 



and he recollected that lie had read somewhere that wasps kill 

 insects and place them in their cells to feed on their larvae when 

 they hatch out. He was unafraid of reality and the facts of nature, 

 yet he adored legend and fiction and all things of the imagination. 

 In the forests he could reconstruct in fancy the sacrificial rites of 

 the Druids, the while he was watching a woodsman chop down a 

 tree. He could be at one and the same time a Robin Hood in 

 imagination and a woodchopper in actuality. 



Late in October 1870 the Smiths added one hundred new apple 

 trees to their orchard, and Erwin journeyed joyfully with his father 

 to a nearby railroad station to get them when they were shipped 

 from a Monroe nursery. When picking apples, high on a ladder, 

 "a basket on his knee, he was prone to sail his romantic ships far 

 beyond the thoughts of apples and relive the poets' legends which 

 haunted his brain and murmured on his lips. A rumor spread that 

 soon a railroad might be built to the village. He ardently hoped 

 this would be. He was a born enthusiast. When driving the 

 family's cattle and horses home from pasture, or hogs and other 

 domestic animals from the woods where they fed on acorns and 

 leafy foliage, he would mark out new plants, return to the locali- 

 ties after evening chores to gather them; and far into the night 

 study them with the aid of a manual. Things of both the earth 

 and sky entranced him. He could agree with John Ruskin that 

 there was no need of picture art galleries when gloriously colored 

 ever-changing skies were near. Equally much he could love with 

 his whole heart the sight of a meadow filled with sky-blue gentians 

 where a forest was the background. In autumn he would watch 

 the " gray oaks cast afield their rippling spray on long straight 

 arms to greet the autumn ray And make of light and shade the 

 background meet For picture painted by the moment fleet." To 

 him, as also to Thoreau, " Olympus is but the outside of the earth 

 everywhere," whether one gathered the pale anemone, blue rathe 

 violet, or harbinger-of-spring, climbed adventurously the hilltop 

 hemlocks to the open sky, or fished through the ice of Maple River 

 amid the barren trunks of maple, ash, and elm. 



On September 4, 1870, Rancellor King Smith and his family 

 united with the First Congregational Church of Hubbardston. 

 That autumn thoughts of the family turned to Erwin's schooling, 

 a matter which owing to circumstances had been neglected since 

 their departure from Gilberts Mills. As late as December 21, the 



