84 WOODLAND IDYLS. 



j June 9. While eating breakfast at 

 five o'clock this morn a feathered choir sang 

 for me. It was that of a bevy of bluebirds 

 which alighted in the maple above my head and 

 warbled with cheery chortle unto one another 

 and to me. Thus do I have music without pay, 

 food for the hunting, water as cold and spark- 

 ling as a cleft in the rock can furnish and air 

 as pure as the zephyrs can find and bring unto 

 my. abiding place. 



Donning my rubber boots as a proctection 

 from the heavy dew and taking a bucket of fish 

 which had stood in the cool water of the spring 

 over night, I wended my way up past another 

 ''sulphur spring," up through the old pasture 

 where I trapped opossums forty years ago, down 

 a steep hillside and up again to the old home 

 of my hoyhood. The rosy dawn of morn had 

 not yet called unto the home folks with sufficient 

 force to thoroughly arouse, but my cry of ' ' fresh 

 fish" soon brought them out. Bartering my 

 fish for a bucket of cherries, I sauntered back 

 down the valley of the brooklet to my camp and 

 then to my lounging place on the crest of the 

 ridge. 



While at the house I saw, just at six A. M., 

 the "bean-pole man," hatchet in hand, go by. 

 Now I hear the faint thud of steel on wood as 

 he hacks away at elm and oak and sugar poles. 

 Does he, too, rejoice to be out on the wooded 



