MAV, 1922 



n L E A N I N G S IX B K E C U L T U R K 



redbuds lildom ;ni(l (In- tlirilling beauty of 

 fruit trees — oh, tlie cdierry orchards today! 



We have set out — how many will live? we 

 wonder — maples and ' ' cork ellums ' ' and 

 hackberries and dogwood and redbud and 

 baby cedars and fruit trees, and many 

 shrubs. And bought an Airedale pup. We 

 named him Sir Jock of Lone Oak! But we 

 call him Jock. 



Wondering if the trees we set out will 

 thrive, I am reminded of the aged man 

 whose success in tree planting Vergil re- 

 cords in the apiarian Georgic. I am sorry 

 thus to distress you, kind sir — you who do 

 dislike reference to the classic days of the 

 Emperor Augustus! Must you read it? Tt 

 is very skippable. But the courteous Man- 

 aging Editor Avill tell you that the plans for 

 the rest of this article were badly disar- 

 ranged by the loss of some photographs 

 somewhere between Medina and Lone Oak 

 Eoad, modern, up-to-date pictures of mod- 

 ern, up-to-date bee-yards and the people who 

 work them. So it seems a most happy op- 

 portunity to return to Vergil long enough 

 to tell about the old -man of Corycus, whose 

 gentle life I have been eager to refer to for 

 several months. Your pat and undeniable 

 assertion that Gleanings is being published 

 in 1922 having nearly frightened me per- 

 manently into the present decade, you can 

 guess how charmed I am at this pleasant 

 opportunity? Not of my making, you see — 

 merely claimed as it comes. This conces- 

 sion, however, I make — not to quote the 

 Roman poet line aft^r line, much as I enioy 

 it myself, but to re-tell the substance of it 

 informally, weaving in a few of his espe- 

 (■i;illv appealing phrases. 



No one knows the name of this old man 

 who has been so charmingly immortalizeil 

 by Vergil. The poet speaks of him as an 

 aged man from Corycus whose friendship he 

 had made. He owned a few poor roods of 

 worthless land — no pasture thereon for cat- 

 tle, no convenient food for flocks, no good 

 soil for vine ;. Yet for all that, there among 

 tlie tliorns, lie raised his small plot of 

 greens; and around the greens — this is one 

 reason people have kept on loving him 

 through all the generations of book-lovers 

 and beauty-lo^A-ers — he sowed a few white 

 lilies and some poppies and verbenas. And 

 " his soul 



\'ied with the weitlth of Icings, when late at eve 



He heaped the ■nnpurchased banquet on his 

 board.' ' 



Ah, that unpurchased banquet! Moreover, 

 in spite of the unfriendliness of his soil, his 

 skill made him first to gather spring's roses 

 and autumn's ripe apples. While winter was 

 still laying "cold curb upon the frozen 

 stream," he was "toying with some soft- 

 tressed hyacinth"— flower-lover that he was. 



Will you be surprised to learn that he 

 kept bees, too? He gave them, also, such 

 care that he was the first 



" . . . . whose brooding bees 



Wero in full sw;ir:n : his fingers earliest 

 Pressed forth the bubbling honey from th',- 

 combs." 



How lie would have eii,joy('(l fnll sheets of 

 foundation and an extractor! For what 

 challenges our admiration is the way his 

 quiet life of simple wise content was digni- 

 fied by faithful, intelligent, painstaking la- 

 bor, with its resulting skill. 



He set out lime trees and luxuriant j)ines. 

 What his fruit trees promised him in blos- 

 soming spring, they bore for him in autumn. 

 As for transplanting trees, this is what 1 

 keep recalling, when I look out at our re- 

 cently transplanted maples and hackberries 

 and ' ' cork ellums. ' ' 



"His elm-tree saplings even wIumi full-grown 

 He could transplant, or pear-trees iMg and strong. 

 Or the young plane-tree when its spreading 



boughs 

 Screened from the sun the guest who drank his 



wine." 



No such experts were the dark-skinned toil- 

 ers who set out our trees! (Yet today two 

 of the dogwood are coming into bloom, and 

 there are signs and ])romises on one maple 

 and an elm or two.) 



Don't you wish we might liave known him, 

 the aged man from Corycus? Wouldn't we 

 have enjoyed visiting him, sitting under the 

 spreading boughs of his hospitable plane 

 trees? Doubtless, had he lived today, he 

 would bring up grape juice or lemonade !^ — 

 and how we would all talk! What questions 

 we would ask him! About beekeeping and 

 hyacinths and his philosophy of life. And 

 if invited, as quite surely we would be — 

 being beekeepers! — we would stay to share 

 the unpurchased banquet heaped upon his 

 board, and feed our souls on the fineness 

 and simplicity and rich, full-flavored per- 

 sonality of this beekeeping lover of God's 

 earth. 



Does this picture of Vergil's old man re- 

 mind you of anybody? Can you not see 

 in it a great resemblance to many beekeep- 

 ers? Bees and flowers and fruit, skill and 

 content and simple living — do not these 

 things form a large part of the rich later 

 years of most beekeepers? I have some- 

 times said that my mental pictirre of the 

 Avord beekeeper is always an old man, gray- 

 haired and adorably wise and gentle (are 

 not the wise always gentle?), with his bee 

 hives set in an orchard. 



In his impressive and dignified lines. 

 "Gone Home," April Gleanings, page 255, 

 Dr. Weble-y gives our imagination a glimpse 

 of our beloved Dr. Miller being welcomed 

 to the Other Home by Huber and Langstroth 

 and Cowan and the "gentle Hutchinson." 

 Because they were so alike in the fine sim- 

 plicities and noble dignities and serene sat- 

 isfactions of life, may not lie whom we so 

 delighted to honor — "the Master of the 

 Gentle Craft," "the Grand Old Man of 

 Beedom," "the Sage of Marengo" — have 

 been welcomed also, in that "white tre- 

 mendous daybreak," by Vergil's aged man 

 from Corycus? 



