128 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



The sincere nature-writer, because he knows 

 he cannot prove it, and that you cannot prove it, 

 and that the scientists cannot prove it, knows that 

 he must not be asked for proofs, that he must be 

 above suspicion, and so he sticks to the truth as 

 the wife of Caesar to her spouse. 



Let the nature-writer only chronicle his observ- 

 ations as Dr. C. C. Abbott does in " A Natural- 

 ist's Rambles about Home," or let him dream a 

 dream about his observations as Maeterlinck does 

 in " The Life of the Bee," yet is he still confined to 

 the truth as a hermit crab to his shell — a hard, 

 inelastic, unchangeable, indestructible house that 

 he cannot adapt, but must himself be adapted to, 

 or else abandon. Chronicle and romance alike we 

 want true to fact. But this particular romance 

 about the Bee will not thus qualify. It was not 

 written for beekeepers, even amateur beekeepers, 

 for they all know more or less about bees, and 

 hence they would not understand the book. It 

 was written for those, the city-faring folk, like 

 my market-man, who asked me how many pounds 

 of honey a bee would gather up in a year, and 

 whether I kept more than one bee in a hive. A 

 great many persons must have read " The Life 



