138 WOODLAND IDYLS. 



for : " Our thoughts are the epochs in our 

 lives ; all else is but a journal of the winds that 

 blew while we were here." 



Saturday, June 17. The "get-up, get-up, 

 get-up" of a Carolina wren from the ash by 

 the side of my tent was the first sound that 

 I heard this morn. A flicker cackled from 

 afar his rattling reveille and I knew that an- 

 other day had pulled the blanket from its eyes 

 and was well begun. At first the sky was partly 

 overcast and the morning air cool and crisp. 

 My fuel was in large part damp as the sun had 

 shone but little if at all since the rain of yester- 

 day. The fire therefore burned slowly, and it 

 was half past five by the time breakfast was 

 over and things ship-shape in camp. 



From my basin of stewed mulberries I poured 

 off half a pint of juice and drank it at a 

 draught. It was delicious and if fermented 

 would doubtless have made excellent wine. Why 

 could not many of the wild mulberries which 

 annually go to waste in the woods be used for 

 wine? They would furnish to it a new tang, 

 one which the grape, the cherry and the black- 

 berry do not possess, 



In rubber boots I follow the bed of the stream- 

 let from the tent up, one fourth of a mile or 

 more, to an old water-gate. For the most part 

 the water runs over the bare Knobstone shale 



