198 WOODLAND IDYLS. 



The crust of earth each day I comb for facts 

 worth noting down. Not always do I find them. 

 In the forenoons I write most, the afternoons 

 forming the true margins of my camping days. 

 The little things about me are those which most 

 I seek ; if need be the comings and goings, the do- 

 ings and lovings of the most despised of earth's 

 lowly creatures. For facts regarding them will 

 serve me well ' t to point a moral or adorn a tale. ' ' 

 At times, however, I hesitate not to grapple 

 with the music of the spheres, for the thought 

 of human is untrammeled and the meshes of 

 his net of cerebral cells may embrace the uni- 

 verse. 



The hours of my marmot seeking in this clover 

 patch must I change. They have gauged them 

 well and not a hairy muzzle have I seen this 

 morn. But too soon have I written this. Even 

 as I make the period 1 look up and far over see 

 one, the clover leaves a-gorging. Taking care- 

 ful aim I let Susannah rumble and the energy 

 in another marmot's body has gone forth to 

 take its place in the waste basket of all space 

 above. Unseeable, unbearable, untastable, im- 

 palpable, a something we wot not of this thing 

 of animal energy this thing which a rifle bul- 

 let changes in a hundredth of a second from the 

 flame of life in the body of a living marmot to 

 the coldness of death in a carcass of matter. 

 With us for a little time it lingers, then, tiring 



