TOM OWEN, THE BEE-MUNTER. 49 
As is usual with great men, he had his followers, 
who, with a courtier-like humility, depended upon the 
expression of his face for all their hopes of success. 
The usual salutations of meeting were sufficient to 
draw me within the circle of his influence, and I at once 
became one of his most ready followers. 
“See yonder!” said Tom, stretching his long arm 
into infinite space, ‘‘ see yonder—there’s a bee.” 
We all looked in the direction he pointed, but that 
was the extent of our observation. 
“Tt was a fine bee,’ continued Tom, “ black body, 
yellow legs, and went into that tree,”—pointing to a tow- 
ering oak, blue in the distance. “Ina clear day I can 
see a bee over a mile, easy!” 
When did Coleridge “talk” like that? And yet 
Tom Owen uttered such a saying with perfect ease. 
After a variety of meanderings through the thick 
woods, and clambering over fences, we came to our place . 
of destination, as pointed out by Tom, who selected a 
mighty tree containing sweets, the possession of which 
the poets have likened to other sweets that leave a sting 
behind. 
The felling of a mighty tree is a sight that calls up 
a variety of emotions; and Tom’s game was lodged in 
one of the finest in the forest. But “the axe was laid 
at the root of the tree,” which, in Tom’s mind, was made 
expressly for bees to build their nests in, that he might 
cut them down, and obtain possession of their honeyed ~ 
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