202 Bees and Buckwheat 



bered in December, and, wise man that he 

 was, said nothing meanwhile. Why, indeed, 

 should he throw aside the opportunity to pose 

 as one having superior knowledge, when 

 others were so persistent in asserting it of 

 him ? There is that much vanity in all men. 



But a year later his superior knowledge 

 failed him. I had found the same tree in my 

 solitary rambles, and was there ahead of him. 

 Still, I never enjoyed my triumph. I felt 

 very far from complimented when he re- 

 marked, as an excuse for his failure, that " a 

 skunk had been at the only bee-tree in the 

 woods. He saw signs of the varmint all 

 about ;" and when he said this he looked 

 direftly at me, with his nose in the air. 



It is winter now, and when in the early 

 morning I find cakes and honey upon the 

 breakfast-table, excellent as they are in their 

 way, they are the better that they call up the 

 wide landscape of those latter August days 

 and of frosty Oftober, for I see less of the 

 morning meal before me than of bees and 

 buckwheat. 



