HAYING TIME 



well stood close to the door with a gourd for a 

 dipper, and some tall grasses leaned over the 

 curb to look at themselves in the cool mirror. 

 Griselle conducted me from room to room as an 

 ancient guide might do. She opened an old par 

 lor, threw back the shutters, letting in a yellow 

 gleam on the surprised matting. She even played 

 &quot; I Would Not Live Always &quot; on the old melo- 

 deon, after lifting off several boxes of seed and a 

 bunch of laurel that had evidently lain there since 

 last Christmas. It was very magical. The antique 

 squeak of that old bellows swept me back to other 

 days. How could she know that there was any 

 irony in her song, and that I would not have been 

 there if it had not been for my unreasonable desire 

 to live always ? The tender, asthmatic pulse of 

 the instrument made me feel like a Hawthorne, 

 and my emotions bulged as if with &quot; Mosses 

 from an Old Manse.&quot; 



On another occasion I arrived there in haying 

 time. Do you know what a dry spell in the 

 woods means in early July? It is at that fecund 

 hour that Nature comes into the full flush of life. 

 Her atoms seem to break into animate existence, 

 and you stand in a vortex of flying dust that takes 

 on the first stir of vitality. The days are heavy 

 with the weight of creation, and the tide of life 

 croons in your ears as you sit and fan yourself 

 helplessly. The hours are parched, and vegeta 

 tion languishes with its burden of insects. But 

 it was haying time, and Gabe Hotchkiss gave 

 me to understand that all the affairs connected 



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