128 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES, 
summer, with mere shelter from dew if any fall, 
are all one needs for healthful rest. 
Our bower among the reeds caught that 
gentle current of air which nearly always flows 
with the way of a river, and we were rarely dis- 
turbed by gnats or mosquitoes. There were 
no dangerous wild beasts, very few poisonous 
snakes, and, of course, nothing else to make 
us fearful. 
But we were not idle dreamers. We had in 
view a definite object, toward which all our 
studies and labors pointed. Alas, the cataclys- 
mal years which soon came swept all away! 
The best that can be gathered from fragment- 
ary remnants and vivid recollections is a sort 
of dreamy pleasure in somewhat living over 
again those days and nights of tranquil green- 
wood life. A little of science and a great deal 
of nature we found out. We learned the ways 
of the fish, the birds, the bees, the winds, the - 
clouds, the flowers. We translated the mean- 
ing of stream-songs and leaf-murmurs. In the 
Palace of Reeds we knew utter freedom based 
on older law than magna charta or any declara- 
tion of rights. When one is a supple boy in the 
wildwood, healthy, happy, strong, with a lone. 
bow in his hands and old romance all through 
him, he is free as the winds and birds. Add to 
this a strong purpose, an aim far ahead, and 
what would you have more? 
Our indoor days, if those spent in the Palace 
may be so called, would have appeared, to a 
world-wise onlooker, somewhat tame; but to 
a poet they would have revealed the labors of 
sincere, earnest souls, feeling their way through 
youth’s morning-mist to the clear light. 
I remember one hot May day, too sultry for 
+ > Cal 
