of 



the philosophizing ; I disagreed, however, as to the 

 reality of the crabs and the woodchucks ; for it was 

 not the attributes and powers of these creatures that 

 she really disbelieved in, but the very existence of 

 the creatures themselves, along her seashore, and 

 upon the farm that she visited. 



"As for fiddler crabs and chewinks and wood- 

 chucks things" she did not see them. Certainly 

 not. Yet a fiddler crab is as real an entity as a 

 thousand-acre marsh, and in its way as interesting. 

 It is a sorry soul that looks for nothing out of doors 

 but fiddler crabs, and insists upon their fiddling ; that 

 never sees the sky-blue, the sea-blue, and the green 

 of the rolling hills. I shall never forget a moonrise 

 over the Maurice River marshes that I witnessed 

 one night in early June. It was a peculiarly solemn 

 sight, and one of the profoundly beautiful experiences 

 of my life, there in the wide, weird silence of the half 

 sea-land, with the tide at flood. Nor shall I ever 

 forget two or three of the stops which I made in the 

 marshes that day to watch the fiddler crabs. Nor 

 shall I forget how they fiddled. For fiddle they did, 

 just as they used to years ago, when they and I lived 

 on these marshes together. 



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