78 NATURE IN A CITY YARD 



we are able to see the eclipse of the moon 

 from our yard as well as if we had been in 

 Walden. 



With the graying and thinning of our 

 hair we have less warmth under it, they 

 say, and begin to live in the past in that 

 period when we amounted to something, 

 or thought we did. And in this season of 

 the year one childish episode returns to 

 me : May Day. The good old custom, set 

 by the Druids, of rambling off to field or 

 grove on the first of May, and making a 

 show of gathering flowers that usually were 

 not there, was as general in Boston in my 

 early years as that of shooting gunpowder 

 and each other on the Fourth of July among 

 the boys of all our towns to-day. School 

 was dismissed, and the children put on 

 wreaths of flowers, and traveled about in 

 groups, playing games or picnicking with 

 their teachers or other elders among the 

 Cambridge elms, the Middlesex fells, and 

 the Newton hills. As there were few flor- 

 ists in those days and little pocket-money 

 among the juvenile Puritans, their wreaths 

 were made of paper ; and sheets of colored 



