4 Boyhood, Early Schooling, and Teaching 



Within a group that has so little care 



For home and its own young and conjugal life, 



To see two fishes live as man and wife 



And guard their eggs and rear the young they bear 



With tenderest solicitude is rare.^ 



Or of frogs: 



The aromatic birch by pondsides grew 



And where tall hemlocks joined the cedar swamp; 



Bullfrogs splashed there and cried har-r-omp, ar-r-omp. 



This boy went about the countryside studying the living forms 

 of hills and valleys, intent only on knovv^ledge for knowledge's 

 sake. He revelled in the " thousand sights and scents and tastes " 

 of nature, the " faint sweet song the August crickets sing," the 

 "gold-green" landscapes, the green meadows, brown pastures, 

 and dense dark thickets. He learned as much as a boy could of 

 agriculture, how corn and oats and other farm products were 

 grown. When in " The Meadow," 



The golden buttercups were his delight, 

 Filling June meadows full of pure sun-gleams; 

 Then came wild strawberries, luscious, red and white; 

 Blue Mimulus along the winding streams. 



In August blossomed stately meadow-rue; 

 Slender solidagos, braiding golden hair; 

 Gorgeous Turks-cap lilies, just a few; 

 With purple fringed orchids here and there. 



All days the bobolinks and blackbirds sang; 

 Crows called and golden meadow larks flew low; 

 With his shrill shout and song the meadows rang. 

 For glad was the boy, beholding fair things grow.*^ 



Even at home on long Sunday summer afternoons, he found 

 beauty and dreams in his surroundings: "Then would [he] sit 

 beneath the lifted sash; To hear the music of the falling stream. 

 Or lie beneath the dooryard's mountain ash, Steeped in some 

 poet's " flight of fancy. The sounds of birds ringing through the 

 copses, the sight of blackberries ripening on the barren hillsides, 

 of the Jo-pye weed in bloom, of the sight of Lobelia cardinalis 

 the crimson flower, or sweet flag, or the "orchard crowned" 



^ July 5, 1926. * September 3, 1926. 



