GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



December, 1922 



lowed, left ine inexpressibly tired, wearied 

 with unutterable emotional weariness. I 

 could not write. I was empty, somehow; 

 completely empty; and sitting down, alone, 

 haunting hours came persistently back to be 

 lived over. Then another thing (of course, 

 the deciding one); don't you think women 

 have some sort of mental antennae that 

 somehow reach out and sense things? Well, 

 one autumn day I wrote the Editors that 

 my mental antennae sensed that this De- 

 partment was their despair. (Eemember 

 their desperate and futile effort of 1921 to 

 swing it into something practical? Ee- 

 member, this past spring, the "irate gentle- 

 man" who shooed me gently back from the 

 age of Augustus to 1922? Well, you see, he 

 is one of the Editors. I just don't stay put 

 in proper departmental limits. And that is 

 hard on Editors, even the patient, courteous 

 Editors of Gleanings.) So I said if they 

 would like this Department discontinued, it 

 would be very easy, because of my weary- 

 heartedness, to stop. Sure enough, they ad- 

 mitted thev did have plans for some 

 changes, and if . . . And so . . . 

 See? 



And now, in parting, I wish that I might 

 lav before each one of you who have stretch- 

 ed such friendly hands to me in these past 

 eight years, my tribute of appreciation for 

 the gifts you have brought, the fair, rare, 

 high gifts of the spirit — the heartening 

 word, the chatty beekecpery letters, the 

 joys shared (and the sorrows), the friendli- 

 ness, the great unexpected friendliness. I 

 should almost like to name them over one 

 bv one, these beekeepins: friends, to offer 

 frank and open thanks for this great gift 

 of friendship; — the queen-breeder from 

 Texas, who once shared Avith me his fine 

 enthusiasm for a lovely little child; another 

 Texas man who sends extra stamps in his 

 friendlv letters, lest others forcret, and who 

 is coming to see us when they strike oil: one 

 from the far northwest whose Omar Khay- 

 ■■"am. loved in college days, turned to dust 

 in his heart when his bov went off in khaki 

 ^the nity of it — that sometimes loved beau- 

 ty fails at last, like del Sarto's wife, to take 

 the soul to the heights'); one in New En,o- 

 land who showed me the beautiful Mohawk 

 Trail; the girl in New Zealand who let me 

 know the charm of her far-off country and 

 the high gallant courap'e of her blind 

 mother and the desolate davs following her 

 denth; the man of the same Innd who copied 

 a great poem and through letters let mo 

 feel the sharp contrast between life in Lon- 

 don even enriched with good music, and 

 that of a free sun -swept farm in New Zea- 

 land, with boos nnd health: the boy in the 

 Australian Imperial Expeditionarv Force, 

 who, writinsj from Somewhere in France, 

 shared the quick memories of the home 

 bees and the home girj (1117 last letter to 



him was returned from France, undelivered; 

 did you get back to them, Australian Sol- 

 dier?); the woman in Ohio — perhaps the 

 only non-beekeeping friend who has come 

 through Gleanings — who has found a close 

 bond in our common love of the poets and 

 the things of the spirit ;the woman in Ver- 

 mont who writes of sleighs on the snow- 

 bound earth and sap dripping from maple 

 trees in early spring; another New England 

 woman with an "understanding heart" and 

 letters of rare charm; the man in North 

 Carolina whose letters are filled with the 

 spirit of outdoors, frogs and stars and gar- 

 den-making and a singing through the dark; 

 the Japanese friend whose cards and letters 

 have brought a whiff of cherry bloom from 

 old Japan; the Englishman of Jamaica who 

 knows Selborne and cares for live books; 

 the woman in Florida who — but no, it might 

 sound like boasting to tell of her, as though 

 I were saying. Behold how great a friend I 

 have, rather than, as I mean it. Behold how 

 great a friend she is! What heights and 

 depths and breadths of friendship she has 

 opened to my heart! And oh, all you who 

 love Vergil! — all you who love myths! And 

 the many, many more of you, of various 

 states and other lands, each bringing the 

 priceless gift of the kindly heart and the 

 generous word and the great irresistible 

 charm of friendliness. How my heart has 

 loved and appreciated you all. 



There have even been times when this 

 friendly spirit has been symbolized by ma- 

 terial gifts, practical or lovely — queen cages 

 and hive-tools and feeders and winter pack- 

 ing-cases, poetry and honey and citrus fruit 

 and shining-leaved holly, journals and pa- 

 pers and books and pictures, daintv hand 

 work and- — the grace of it! — bulbs of canna 

 nnd tuberose and cinnamon vine, hollyhock 

 seeds and the seed of wild thyme. My deep 

 thanks to you all. 



T have not been a good correspondent. To 

 manv of these friends T am in heavy arrears 

 of letters, weeks, months, even years. Can 

 vou believe, dear friends whom T have never 

 7net, that the fault is one not of the heart 

 but of the hand, or the unskilful ordering 

 of my days? You cannot know what you 

 have meant to me, one and all, or what you 

 have brought to me that eye. hath not seen 

 nor ear heard but which have entered into 

 the heart of me. of graciousness and kindli- 

 ness and high whole-hearted courtesy. May 

 the years drop their fairest blessings on you. 

 Mav your bees, dream-driven, undaunted, 

 go humming happily, ardently, inspiringly, 

 from flower heart to flower heart, bringing 

 their precious freightage home to the waxen 

 urns for your garnering, while the singing 

 eagerness of them and their rapturous con- 

 tent become a very part of the veriest deeps 

 of the innermost deathless part of you. 

 GRACE ALLEN. 



