c 



26 



I SIMPLY can- 

 not get into 

 my subject 

 this month with- 

 out being per- 

 sonal first. It is 

 so long since I 

 have been! — so 

 here are . 



Greetings. 



Happy New Year to you, friends, 



Gleaners one and all, 

 Amateurs and veterans, beefolk 



great and small — 

 East and west and south and north, 



forest, field and fen — 

 Happy New Year to you all, women- 

 folk and men I 

 Happy New Year to the kiddies with 



their starry eyes 1 

 Greetings to the Editors, friendly 



folk and wise! 

 Everybody, everywhere, here and 



overseas, 

 Happy New Year to you all — and also 



to your bees ! 



Frankly, that is a come-back. I greeted 

 you just that way five years ago. But, in 

 one way, I am coming back myself, today. 

 That, at least, is how it feels — as tho I had 

 been away for a whole year in some far-off 

 place of strange formalities, where all the 

 friendly intimacies were forbidden. You 

 may not have missed me, but oh dear!- — ^oh 

 dear everybody! — how I have missed you! 

 Missed, that is, the old sense of chatting 

 merrily with you — you others who love the 

 great good world of the great good God and 

 all the things in it, bees included — chatting 

 merrily about a thousand and one things 

 perhaps, tho chiefly about the one. 



Beekeeping is only a sideline with you 

 and me, and we have an almost embarrass- 

 ing wealth of interests besides that of bees. 

 That is the bond of our fellowship. But 

 life does not hold us' to that, and it is hard 

 sometimes to let the printed page so hold 

 us. With the specialists, who must study so 

 sternly and steadily their solemn problems 

 of method and cost of production and the 

 rest, it may be different. Tho deep down 

 in my own heart I fancy, somehow, it may 

 not. Most of them are so delightfully hu- 

 man, too. But anyway, this is not their De- 

 partment! It expects them to skip it' 



You see, we tried an experiment during 

 1921^ — had you noticed it? Part of us wasn't 

 really happy about it, but she tried hard, at 

 that. She tried to be very practical — very- — 

 very direct and definite and detailed and 

 matter-of-fact, howsoever prosy and dry-as- 

 dusty her page might thus become. (Eemem- 

 ber the anatomy number? — ^!!! Yet, after 

 all, the real joke was — it was fun!) But 

 now — well, the rest of us have been most 

 courteous. And I have come back. If, 

 however, you don 't like it — you who keej) 

 bees for a sideline — if you really do not 

 want one single thing except bees, beekeep- 

 ing and beclc^^epcrs mentioned in this de- 

 partment — and that without ti'immings or 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Januaey, 1&3'J 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



3 



Grace Allen 



flully - ruffles — 

 no friendly per- 

 sonalities and no 

 glimpses into 

 the great world 

 of action or as- 

 piration or beau- 

 ty or books — 

 you have only, I 

 suppose, to men- 

 tion that fact to the Editors. And there 

 will be another change. 



One day last year, at about this time, I 

 didn't know whether to laugh or to break 

 my heart. Over and again I had tried to 

 write the January Sideline article in a new 

 mood and manner. I wrote and destroyed, 

 wrote and destroyed; but each effort was 

 more dead and wooden than its predecessor. 

 Till at last, in a sort of blithe despair, I 

 wisely gave up, and did these lines instead — 



On Trying to Write as Requested. 



My thoughts come dressed in gayest gauze, 

 Like baby rainbows tipped with wings. 



They leap from flower to star to catch 

 The little echoes when life sings. 



They kneel or dance impartially 

 For thoughts are spirit things. 



But one cold dawn I dragged them forth 

 And wrapped them round with sober gray. 



"Now keep your feet on eartli," said I, 

 "And walk as proper people say, 



Down roads of reason, hedged and straight, 

 And-get-some-where-Ipray ! 



They walked like mummies in old masks! 



All day I grieved because their tread 

 So hollow rang. I did not know 

 That something out of them had fled — 

 Till spirit things, with rainbow wings. 



Came laughing home to bed! 



Do you know Virgil's Georgics? I have 

 been living with them in the spare time of 

 the last few days, till I feel as tho I had 

 been in Mantua. And Virgil, known pre- 

 viously only in the Anna viruntquc cano of 

 schooldays, has sung his way straight into 

 my heart and on to the ends of my finger- 

 tips. 



By what long paths of wonder do the an- 

 cient gifts come down! Seventy years be- 

 fore the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, was 

 Virgil born. Great actors were on the 

 world's stage in those days — even as in 

 these. While the little Virgil played about 

 his father's farm, Pompey was clearing the 

 Mediterranean of pirates, Cicero was thun- 

 dering his deathless orations against con- 

 spiring Catiline, and the great Augustus 

 was born. While he was a schoolboy, Caesar 

 was conquering Gaul. While he was still a 

 young man, Pompey the Great was over- 

 come by Julius Caesar — -still greater; four 

 years later Caesar himself was assassinated 

 "at the base of Pompey 's statue, 

 Which all the time ran blood . ."; 

 Brutus, defeated in his turn, slew himself 

 at Philippi; arid Marc Anthony gave his in- 

 toxicated soul into the keeping of Egypt '■:■ 

 queen. Before he was forty, Anthony and 

 Cleopatra, overcome in battle, had brought 



