FOREWORD 



of retreating winter they leaped forth in multitudes: 

 daisy and phlox and poppy and bluebonnet and Indian 

 feather and anemone all tossed their heads and flung 

 their beautiful wings into the sunlight. The earth 

 was sweet with the wild, fresh sweetness of flowers. 

 Even the cacti and the brush blossomed like roses of 

 Cashmere, hiding their thorns amid a profusion of 

 loveliness. 



Then the winter came, brief, primordial in its 

 changes. The brown earth and the brown-gray sweep 

 of the horizon, stretching inimitably away, wakened in 

 rueful contrast to the riot of the vernal months. 



Season after season went by until, indeed, I seemed 

 but a ghost fluttering in and out among the whirling 

 days. Overhead a sky of perennial blue; in my face 

 the winds from every zone, and in my ears the som- 

 nolent sounds of the years gone to dust. I was over- 

 whelmed by the impalpable significance of the pri- 

 meval world and by the mysterious unfoldings of 

 life. 



Hours at a time I sat amid my little brothers, the 

 bees, now and again catching up the harmonies of their 

 existence and marveling much at the divine rhythm 

 of their speech. The longer I sat and brooded the 

 more I grew into their lives, until I seemed to know 

 their every mood and to sound the mysteries of their 

 being. 



They seemed to know me and to love me. Often 

 in their flight, tired and overladen, they would rest 

 for a moment on my sleeve, and then away. Many a 

 one did I raise from the earth where he had fallen 

 all too like our fellow-mortals weighted down by bur- 



10 



