A DAY IN THE WOODS 147 



expressed a feeling of neighborliness and have 

 told each other no lies. 



With every rod the wood changes from glory 

 to glory. I remark with special joy a grove of 

 tall, slender, smooth-barked water-oaks, every 

 one in new leaf. Height rather than girth is their 

 aim. " We must have the sun," they say, " and 

 we climb to get it." How good the sun is, let 

 their leaves testify ; those millions on millions of 

 shining leaves, every one new. Yes, every one 

 new. I cannot write the word too often. And 

 many times as I write it, the Northern reader 

 will have but an insufficient sense of its meaning. 

 Such freshness and greenness ! Neither memory 

 nor imagination can body it forth. Happy are 

 the eyes that behold the miracle twice in a single 

 spring. It is like doubling one's year. 



A Carolina wren whistles, near at hand, but 

 invisible (invisibility is the wren's trick), and a 

 red-eyed vireo, farther away, has begun his reit- 

 erative, summer-long exhortation. I was taken by 

 surprise, two or three days ago, when I heard the 

 first of his kind in this same hammock ; I was not 

 looking for him so early. His irrepressible cousin, 

 the white-eye, has been abundantly vocal for at 

 least two months. At this very minute one is re- 

 hearsing a strain with a pretty and decidedly origi- 

 nal quirk at the end. And, by the by, I notice 



