352 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



trees, and loved to watch their growth from year to year. In 

 addition to tree-planting at the right season, during one of his 

 winter visits to "Seven Gates" he planted several thousand 

 nuts with a crowbar through the snow. These were put in dif- 

 ferent soils and exposure, to see where they would grow best. 

 He was very persistent in his efforts to acclimatize the English 

 primrose, at last succeeding marvellously on a hillside sloping to 

 the north and shaded from the direct rays of the sun. It was 

 thus that the interest of his "alleged farm," as he called it, in- 

 creased, and acquired a value of its own independent of being 

 a harbor of refuge which at first was its chief excuse for being. 



At times the restraints and worries of his environment bore 

 heavily upon him and the longing for space and solitude be- 

 came overwhelming. Under this stress he would set out for the 

 country with the zest of one who scents afar the perfume of 

 green fields. The train was no sooner under way than he would 

 toss aside his hat, shut his eyes, and take a deep breath, every 

 line of his face showing the relief of one who had shaken off the 

 halter. The satisfaction grew as he realized with the passing 

 of each milestone that he was on his way to a studentless wil- 

 derness, an academic Sahara. He had frequent recurrent attacks 

 of the rural mania, and when they came it was difficult to per- 

 suade him that there was anything else worth living for besides 

 a trip to the Vineyard; moreover, it often required cunning 

 stratagem to keep him from making the venture when the 

 weather was bitter and the time inconvenient. 



The visits to the farm which he enjoyed most were in the 

 autumn just after the struggles of the college year were over, 

 when things had in a fashion settled down to a semblance of 

 order, when students had temporarily at least been shaken into 

 place, the square peg got out of the round hole of elective be- 

 wilderment. In the country, also, the fervid time of reaping 

 was at an end and the fields, with their stacks of full-eared corn, 

 slumbered peacefully through the autumn days. Here, re- 

 moved from a veritable storm-centre of contending wits, there 



