216 ' SMALL SHOT 



year-ago summer when birds and fields welcomed 

 him with song and holiday attire, now finds the 

 banks laid bare by the axe, and the stream turned 

 away by some scientific agriculturist who hates 

 willows and crooked waterways; when he, who has 

 not visited copse and wood with dog and gun since 

 last year's leaves were gaudy or sere, goes out to- 

 day to find the alders he had come to think his own, 

 only brush heaps and clusters of stubby stumps; 

 his worshiped hemlocks and pines, his lithe birches 

 and widespread beeches, and bee-inviting dog- 

 woods, only saw logs and piles of cord wood lying in 

 state among lopped branches and fluffy plumes of 

 fire-weed, his heart grows sick with a climbing 

 sorrow that will not down. How suddenly has his 

 goodly heritage passed from him. A year ago he 

 had more good of it than the one who held the deed 

 of the land, though he got naught tangible there- 

 from but a half-filled creel or a few brace of birds. 

 Yet how full was fed his starved spirit that so long 

 had craved the blessed food that Nature gives to 

 those who love her. 



The worst of it is, that if he prays, or curses, or 

 weeps, he cannot change it. By and by over this 

 waste may be heard the "lovely laughter of the 

 wind-swept wheat" and the hum of bees, which 

 have come here to gather sweets from clover, but 

 never again will brood over it the solemn quiet of 

 the old woods, nor grouse cleave the shadows of 



