R. F. D. 193 



goes drumming up and whirrs down an evergreen aisle. 

 Tom was a mighty hunter in his younger days, and has 

 never yet forgiven the state legislature for making 

 it illegal for him to go out with a gun on the Sabbath 

 (not, of course, that he doesn't go out with a gun on the 

 Sabbath!). This drive through the woods appeals to 

 some deep instinct within him, and his eyes become keen 

 and youthful. He likes, too, in a less expressive way, 

 the red bunchberries by the road, the bloodroot and 

 hepaticas of Spring, the gentians in the late Summer. 

 He loves the ground pine trailing on the bank, the earthy 

 smell, the distant hammer of a woodpecker, the sweet 

 clarion of a hermit thrush. It seems almost as if such a 

 man, passing daily through this timber with senses alert 

 and instinctive sympathy with nature, might fashion a 

 woodland lyric to the rhythmic plod of his horse's hoofs 

 and the gentle sway of the buggy. So far as we know, 

 however, Tom has never broken into verse. His near- 

 est approach was his statement one day to a summer 

 boarder in the big farmhouse down the hill on the other 

 side. 



" I seen the white tail of a deer go boundin' off through 

 the balsams," he said, "like a snowball through a velvet 

 veil." 



The forest is, in reality, on the" crest of a divide, and 

 when the road emerges on the farther side a splendid 

 prospect opens out. The road plunges abruptly down, 

 past a sentinel pine and over a cascade of thank-you- 



