by blue-backed tree-swallows, every crack and 

 cranny wide enough and deep enough to hold a 

 nest being appropriated for domestic uses by a 

 pair of the dainty people. It is no longer a 

 sorry forest of battered, sunken stumps ; it is a 

 swallow-Venice. And no gayer gondoliers ever 

 glided over wave-paved streets than these swal- 

 lows on the river. When the days are longest 

 the village does its whittling on the new bridge 

 in the midst of this twittering bird life, watch- 

 ing the swallows in the sunset skim and flash 

 among the rotting timbers over the golden-flow- 

 ing tide. 



If I turn from the river toward the woods 

 again, I find that the fences all the way are 

 green with vines and a-hum with bumblebees. 

 Even the finger-board at the cross-roads is a liv- 

 ing pillar of ivy. All is life. There are no dead, 

 no graveyards anywhere. A nature-made ceme- 

 tery does not exist in my locality. Yonder, 

 where the forest-fire came down and drank of 

 the river, is a stretch of charred stumps ; but 

 every one is alive with some sort of a tenant. 

 Not one of these stumps is a tombstone. We 

 have graves and slabs and names in our burial- 

 [184] 



