CHAPTEE XXIV. 



THE " PAINTER " IN THE PIG PEN. 



'•I was with Hercules and Cadmus, once, 

 When in a wood of Crete, they bay'd the bear 

 With hounds of Sparta ; never did I hear 

 Such gallant chiding." 



midsummer-night's dream. 



The days were getting rapidly warmer in the interior, cut off 

 as we were a large portion of the time by the close woods from the 

 free winds. The ducks had gone to the northward long since, and 

 with them the snipe and the rail. To take their place, the flowers 

 were opening to the spring on every side. 



Hunters are rarely botanists. Few of their wants are aided 

 by its science with the exception of the knowledge of the points 

 of the compass, told by the moss, or an acquaintance with the 

 texture of different woods, or the medicinal properties of a few 

 plants. They are equally unused to the description of flowering 

 plants. The pointed cutting of a deer's hoof on a cactus leaf to 

 them is a greater study than the most radiant flower that ever 

 fringed its pulpous leaf. They cannot give technical descriptions, 

 and but few natural ones. They may not call the stars by their 

 names, or classify the active life that peoples every muddy pool, 

 or makes a decayed tree a miniature world. 



Yet, for all this, there is no race on whom the sweet influences 

 of the Pleiades fall who are more open to their soothing — none to 

 whose eyes the radiations of the flower afford a keener pleasure 

 — none to whom the fragrance of the woods opens a more vivid 

 association, or who are more observantly drinking in, night and 

 day, those JEsop lessons that man puts into a fable, but that God 

 talks with in letters of life. The constant observation of what is 



