A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 43 



Mrs. Lydia is always glad to do. The pink frock 

 and yellow locks flash upon us at corners over the 

 daffodils, or glimmer far off among the orchard 

 trunks. And as the blithe creature stoops over a 

 butterfly or mocks the starling's whistle or the nut- 

 hatch's pipe, simple and joyous as any of them, we 

 muse upon the estrangement between man and the 

 beasts, which not even such a go-between as Alice 

 may compose. It is a little saddening for us who 

 would like to be friends with the wild things ; some- 

 thing may be done by patience and quiet movement 

 and knowledge of when and where ; but on the 

 whole the lower creation will have none of us. Our 

 friends with the bombarding weapons, from the cata- 

 pult to the hammerless ejector, with the specimen 

 box and the butterfly-net, industriously maintain 

 the rift ; and our own necessary interferences are 

 too great. They cut us, in fact, all the league of 

 little lives, and I for one cannot entirely put it aside. 

 Alice herself, this vision of pure happiness and light 

 heart, with enchantments of softest finger-tips and 

 murmurs of caressing nonsense, cannot charm them. 

 The red-admirals in the early autumn will come and 

 sit on her finger, but for a slice of apple, not for love ; 

 the saturnine toads regard her impassively for a 

 minute and then straddle away to their own devices ; 



