A TRAGEDY IN THE LANE. 97 



scene of violence, of dead and dying scattered 

 over the trampled and torn-up sod ; " murder 

 most foul" in the eyes of a Nature-lover. I 

 could not bear to look upon it. I shunned it, 

 lest I should hate my fellow-man, who can, un- 

 necessarily and in pure wantonness, destroy in 

 one hour what he cannot replace in a lifetime. 



Nor was that the full measure of sufferings 

 inflicted on the lane — and me. That beautiful 

 green passageway happened to be a short cut 

 from the meadow, and horse-rake and hay- wagon 

 made the ravage complete. The one crushed 

 and dragged out every sweet-growing thing 

 spared by the previous devastators, and the 

 other defiled with wisps of dead grass every 

 branch that reached over its grateful shade. It 

 was pitiful, as much for the exhibition thus made 

 of a man's insensible and sordid existence, as 

 for the laceration of my feelings and the actual 

 ruin wrought. 



A pleasanter theme is the love-making in 

 which I chanced to catch the beautiful but 

 bewildering pair in the blackberry bushes. 

 Madam, hopping about an old apple-tree, was 

 apparently not in the least interested in her 

 lover, who followed after, in comical fashion, 

 with ludicrous and truly chat-like antics, every 

 feather raised, crouching, with head turned this 

 way and that, and neck stretched out, and 



