50 By the Rippling Sea. 



wild plums were in all shades of purple, some of them dark 

 in color, with a bloom on their surface ; and these I ate. 

 It is a pleasing reality to see the plum stretch forth its 

 branches, laden with fruit, that are advertised by their color, 

 and say, as it were, " Eat some, please, and throw away 

 the pits. I grew them for you." But that is what the 

 plum does, and so I gathered the lowest fruit, those that 

 grew nearest the sand, and were, therefore, ripest, and dis- 

 tributed the pits along the shore, as the plum had bid me 

 do. 



All day long the crickets sang in the fields or ran from 

 under the planks that I overturned on the up-beach, and 

 now and then a Monarch butterfly or a hawk came sailing 

 along the shore. Several green herons flew from the rushes 

 and then dropped, as it were, suddenly into them again 

 without uttering a sound. 



Where the bay-berry bushes abounded, on a stretch of 

 sand, there were countless numbers of white-breasted swal- 

 lows, and between two posts of a fence, on the topmost wire, 

 I counted thirty birds, and the second and third wires were 

 equally laden. The ground beneath the wires, and on 

 the tops of the fence posts, were bestrewn with the half- 

 digested bay berries. 



The sandpipers, running along by the incoming waves, 

 had more confidence in me than I thought was right. I 

 felt as if they ought to be shoon away, lest by my harm- 

 lessness I might lead them to suppose that all men would 

 be kind to them. They are so intent upon hunting sand- 

 fleas that they are easily hunted themselves, and the sand- 

 fleas have cause to rejoice at the banging of the guns. 



