TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS. 45 
cycle, or spins noiselessly along on a bicycle, 
so that one keeps one’s eyes and ears open? 
If the body is to be refreshed and strengthened 
by exercise, why not also take pains to recreate 
the mind by filling the memory with pungent 
and healthful data? A cool draught from a 
country way-side spring, where the calamus 
erows, and the litilé platoons of sky-blue butter- 
flies arrange themselves on the damp spots, 
might well inspire an ode as good as any Ana- 
creon ever drew from the purple grape-juice. 
The first dragon-fly of the season is always a 
happy discovery for me. 
I know where Longfellow got the sugges- 
tions for his /lower de Luce, the fresher stanzas, 
at least ; for the dew of morning, brushed from 
brook-side flags and meadow weeds, is in them. 
The poem is bookish, too, showing the scholar 
a little too plainly, perhaps; but it serves to 
urge a current of out-door air over one as one 
reads, and the sound of the mill-flume is in the 
measure. It is always a charmiug junction 
where ripe scholarship and an accurate and 
loving knowledge of nature flow together. 
From that point onward how the imagination 
is enriched ! 
The poems of Theocritus and the song of 
the cardinal-bird are blended together, and 
something new comes of the mixture. I like to 
follow through a racy poem or essay some elu- 
sive, fascinating trace of the author’s recipe. 
It is never quite hidden. 
The impetus given to out-door rambling by 
the advent of cycling must, it seems to me, 
bring some fresh elements into American 
thought. It will, unless we allow the love of 
mere whirling to shut out everything else. I 
