366 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



A week ago a change came over him; he became 

 morose and silent, and yesterday when I was admiring, 

 half aloud, the reflection of a beautiful scarlet oak 

 mirrored in the still backwater of the river, he paused 

 in the kneeling position in which he was loosening 

 the grasp of a white flowering dogwood, and first throw- 

 ing out his arms and then beating his chest with them, 

 exclaimed "Other good have trees and water than 

 for the eye to see; they can surely hang and drown 

 the man the heart of whom holds much sorrow, and 

 that man is I!" 



Of course I knew that it was something a little out 

 of the ordinary state of affairs that had sent a man of 

 his capability to tramp about as a vagrant sort of 

 labourer, but I had no previous idea that melancholy 

 had taken such a grip upon him. Much do I prefer 

 Larry, with periods of hilarity ending in peaceful 

 "shlape." Certain peoples have their peculiar racial 

 characteristics, but after all, love of an occasional drink 

 seems a more natural proposition than a tendency 

 to suicide, while as to the relative value of the labour 

 itself, that is always an individual not a racial matter. 



I too am feeling the domestic lure of cooler weather. 

 All the day I wish to be in the open, but when the 

 earlier twilight closes in, the house, with its lamps, 



