74 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
beauty? These flowers are but the bubbles 
thrown up from her inexhaustible veins of vital 
force. Is not this woodsy fragrance which 
loads the air of spring mere surplus steam 
from Nature’s alembics? and in breathing it do 
we not take into our blood a trace of her elixir? 
One’s imagination renews itself by absorbing 
and assimilating the precious exhalations from 
the countless valves of woods and fields. How 
evenly and perfectly our book-lore blends and 
shades into what we gather from nature! 
“ Spirit of lake, and sea, and river— 
Bear only perfumes and the scent 
Of healthy herbs to just men’s fields.” 
All herbs and plants are healthy and whole- 
some, too, in their way. I saw a flicker eat 
the berries of the dreadful night-shade—not 
on this tour, for the plant comes later—and I 
have known a quail to swallow the seeds of 
the Jamestown weed with no bad result. But 
to my tricycling. 
I soon came to where a broad road, leading 
homeward, crossed mine at nearly right-angles, 
and I set my face towards town with a three- 
mile run before me, over a fine rolling way be- 
tween incomparably fertile farms. A  fox- 
squirrel ran ahead of me ona fence until I 
came so near him that he sailed off into a 
field of wheat, and went bounding through the 
waving green blades to a lone walnut tree, up 
which he darted and disappeared in a hole. 
The spires of our little city came in sight, 
eleaming above the maple trees that border 
the streets. I bumped across the railway 
track, whirled over a long hill, and descended 
into the suburbs with my blood tingling, and 
my memory full of fresh sights and sounds. 
At nine o’clock sharp I was at my desk. 
