156 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



hand on, just for old times' sake. A man 

 may take it as one of the less uncomfortable 

 indications of increasing age when he loves 

 to do things simply because he used to do 

 them, or has done them in remembered com- 

 pany. In that respect I humor myself. If 

 there is anything good in the multiplying of 

 years, by all means let me have it. And so 

 I wore the willow. 



On the way down the steep hill through 

 the forest my friends pointed out a maple 

 tree which a pileated woodpecker had rid- 

 dled at a tremendous rate. The trunk con- 

 tained the pupae of wasps (they were not 

 strictly wasps, the entomologist was careful 

 to explain, but were always called so by 

 "common people"), and no doubt it was 

 these that the woodpecker had been after. 

 He had gone clean to the heart of the trunk, 

 now on this side, now on that. Chips by the 

 shovelful covered the ground. The big, red- 

 crested fellow must love wasp pupae almost 

 as well as some people love raspberries. 

 Green leaves, a scanty covering, were still 

 on the tree, but its days were numbered. 

 Who could have foreseen that the stings of 



