TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 



101 e 



f rise and vanish every morning, and along with them 

 . vanish, more and more, the poetry of my early morn- 

 / ing vigil. Poetry and rheumatism cannot long dwell 

 f together in the same clump of cedars, and I had 

 > begun to feel the rheumatism. A month of morning 

 mists wrapping me around had at last soaked through 

 I to my bones. But Agassiz was waiting, and the 

 a world was waiting, for those turtle eggs; and I 



would wait. It was all I could do, for there is no 

 use bringing a china nest-egg to a turtle; she is not 



? open to any such delicate suggestion. 



" Then came a mid-June Sunday morning, with 

 :' dawn breaking a little after three : a warm, wide- 

 ; awake dawn, with the level mist lifted from the level 

 surface of the pond a full hour higher than I had 

 ', seen it any morning before. 



" This was the day. I knew it. I have heard per- 

 i sons say that they can hear the grass grow ; that 

 j they know by some extra sense when danger is nigh. 

 '( For a month I had been watching, had been brood- 

 / ing over this pond, and now I knew. I felt a stirring 

 J of the pulse of things that the cold-hearted turtles 



* could no more escape than could the clods and I. 



-' " Leaving my horse unhitched, as if he, too, un- 

 j derstood, I slipped eagerly into my covert for a look 

 5 at the pond. As I did so, a large pickerel ploughed 

 1 a furrow out through the spatter-docks, and in his 

 \ wake rose the head of a large painted turtle. Swing- 

 ing slowly round, the creature headed straight for 



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