A COMMON EXPERIENCE 



He has almost come to his own again, 

 his long -lost possession in the sunny 

 realm of youth. It lies just beyond the 

 hill before him, from whose crest he 

 shall see the nut-tree where he shot his 

 first squirrel, the southing slope where 

 the beeches hide the spring, where he 

 astonished himself with, the glory of 

 killing his first grouse, and he shall see 

 the glint of the brook flashing down the 

 evergreen dell and creeping among the 

 alder copses. 



He does not expect to find so many 

 squirrels or grouse or trout now as thirty 

 years ago, when a double gun was a won- 

 der, and its possession the unrealized 

 dream of himself and his comrades, and 

 rrone of them had ever seen jointed rod 

 or artificial fly, and dynamite was un- 

 invented. Yet all the game and fish 

 cannot have been driven from nor ex- 

 terminated in haunts so congenial and 

 fostering as these, by the modern horde 

 of gunners and anglers and by the lat- 

 ter-day devices of destruction, and he 

 doubts not that he shall find enough to 

 satisfy the tempered ardor of the gray- 

 beard. 



174 



