A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 171 



leave the white birches to frame the meadows and 

 the wild flowers in the grass ! 



June 25. We have been having some astonishing 

 thunder-storms of nights lately, and I must say that 

 upon one occasion I fled to the house. Two nights ago, 

 however, the sun set in an even sky of lead, there was no 

 wind, no grumblings of thunder. We had passed a 

 a very active day and finished placing the stakes on the 

 knoll in the locations to be occupied by shrubs and 

 trees, all numbered according to the tagged specimens 

 over in the reservoir woods. 



The Man from Everywhere suggested this system, 

 an adaptation, he says, from the usual one of number- 

 ing stones for a bit of masonry. It will prevent confu- 

 sion, for the perspective will be different when the 

 leaves have fallen, and as we lift the bushes, each 

 one will go to its place, and we shall not lose a year's 

 growth, or perhaps the shrub itself, by a second moving. 

 Our one serious handicap is the lack of a pair of extra 

 hands, in this work as in the making of the rose bed, 

 for our transplanting has developed upon a wholesale 

 plan. Barney does not approve of our passion for the 

 wild ; besides, between potatoes and corn to hoe, celery 

 seedlings to have their first transplanting, vegetables to 

 pick, turf grass to mow, and edges to keep trim, with a 



