MY WOODLAND. 



" Thus, without theft, I reap another's field; 

 Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield, 

 And heap my heart with quintuple crops concealed." 



Sidney Lanier. 



The sense of ownership does not always belong 

 most palpably to those who possess. In a very im- 

 portant respect, many persons who own the most 

 really own the least. They have nothing but a 

 mercenary tenure of the property they call theirs. 

 Legally speaking, I have no title-deed to a single 

 rood of ground on the face of the earth, but by 

 virtue of that higher spiritual law announced by 

 the apostle, " All things are yours," I am the happy 

 possessor of about eighty acres of woodland. If I 

 may use a paradox, I believe I own it more than the 

 owner himself does. As one who loves nature, and 

 who knows every nook and angle, every secluded 

 haunt flecked with the sunshine that filters through 

 the over-arching branches, every green, shaded hol- 

 low, and every pond where the feathered and 



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