40 East and West 
How cheap are your emotions? Can they be 
bought with gin or beer, or must they have a 
fine wine; will they yield something to cheap 
music or do they require the involved themes 
and subtle harmonies of nocturnes; do they 
respond only to spectacular sunsets or do 
they withhold themselves for that planetary or 
cosmic mood we name autumn? If this is 
their price, then the goldenrod and asters by 
the glittering sea shall play upon you like 
music, shall resolve themselves in you into 
feeling which no human language can ever 
clothe with words, and the dream song of the 
crickets shall seem to sing itself in you. 
Soon the enchanted hour passes—like an 
emotion—and once more Cape Ann lies, a 
skeleton prostrate at the edge of the sea, and 
the surf beats upon its bleaching bones. 
Flocks of red polls arrive and feed upon the 
alders about the ponds. Tree sparrows re- 
turn and whitewinged and red crossbills in- 
habit now and again the secluded world of the 
hemlock wood, while vociferous companies of 
chicadees and golden-crowned kinglets flit 
around the edge of Dogtown. Rarely a pine 
grosbeak is seen, or a flock of snow buntings 
whirl over the snow-covered pastures in the 
pale yellow light, to lose themselves in the 
