28 WOODLAND IDYLS. 



ries as the weeks went by. One summer there 

 were no berries and I had no spending money. 

 I remember tramping the woods and thickets 

 trying to find a cardinal's nest that I might 

 earn a dollar by capturing the young and then 

 selling them for cage birds. It was a vain 

 qufSt. Neither that summer nor any other did 

 I ever see a young "red-bird" in its nest. 

 What a "heart-eating" gloomy summer that 

 was, without a cent to spend and no chance to 

 make one. How I longed for the "happiness 

 of riches," a happiness that never was, that 

 never will be. To-day I pick berries to stew 

 for my own dinner. In those summers of long 

 ago I picked them to stew for other men's din- 

 ners. The sooner one quits picking berries for 

 other men the more the world will have to offer 

 him. 



Between the blackberry patches and the 

 cuckoo's nest, which I again visited, I noted a 

 large reddish-brown robber-fly bearing away on 

 the wing a bumble-bee thicker bodied but 

 shorter than its captor. It would have been 

 well worth while to have seen the tussle when 

 the two first met in the great struggle. It must 

 have been a case of "dog eat dog" for a little 

 time, and the best cur won. In the past I have 

 seen the robber-flies with many kinds of winged 

 captives, but never before with a bumble-bee. 



