The Lay of the Band 
the philosophizing ; I disagreed, however, as to the 
reality of the crabs and the woodchucks; for it was 
not the attributes and powers of these creatures that 
she really disbelieved in, but the very existence of 
the creatures themselves, — along Aer seashore, and 
upon the farm that she visited. 
“As for fiddler crabs and chewinks and wood- 
chucks — things,” she did not see them. Certainly 
not. Yet a fiddler crab is as real an entity as a 
thousand-acre marsh, — and in its way as interesting. 
It is a sorry soul that looks for nothing out of doors 
but fiddler crabs, and insists upon their fiddling ; that 
never sees the sky-blue, the sea-blue, and the green 
of the rolling hills. I shall never forget a moonrise 
over the Maurice River marshes that I witnessed 
one night in early June. It was a peculiarly solemn 
sight, and one of the profoundly beautiful experiences 
of my life, there in the wide, weird silence of the half 
sea-land, with the tide at flood. Nor shall I ever 
forget two or three of the stops which I made in the 
marshes that day to watch the fiddler crabs. Nor 
shall I forget how they fiddled. For fiddle they did, 
just as they used to years ago, when they and I lived 
on these marshes together. 
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