52 



A YEAR'S WORK IN AN OUT-APIARY 



did on those bright "clover and basswood" morns. It seems like a real 

 living picture again — a picture fairer than thought; a picture fairer 

 than a dream; a picture with ten thousand pearls glistening in earth's 

 rarest sunlight, on one stretch of verdure green, and reaching out 

 beyond the winter's vale to the bright spring again, when the butter- 

 fly begins to flutter in the pleasant breeze, and the joyous children 

 are chasing after sunbeams. Thus I dream. As I have been musing, 

 the clouds have parted in the low west, and the setting sun has 

 dropped down Into the clear space between them and the horizon, 

 throwing over hill and vale ten thousand times ten thousand glittering 

 hues that glow and shine to beautify the landscape and cheer the heart 

 of man. Dawn tiptoes over the mountain tops, and peeps into the 

 valley far below with eager, tender eyes, while darkness gathers up her 



sable robes to skulk and hide away into the crevices and mountain 

 caves; but in the evening come the long light sunrays, beautiful, to gild 

 the world and gladden it with kisses, lovelier, sweeter far than the 

 rarest, gentlest kiss of dawn. So, too, the evening tide of life may 

 grow more beautiful and blest, if life is rightly lived, believing upon 

 Him who was and is the light and life of men. And the bees, now in 

 the evening tide of 1905, are enjoying a rest sweeter by far than their 

 restless sleep during the dawn of their activity, six months ago. 

 farmed 1L,T' ^T *° '^"'P'" '""^^^ '° stentorian tones from my 



I Ton mv .W."V '" "'°"''' '° '^^ '^'' *^^t " i« f-"y time that 

 1 oe on my journey home. 



