238 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



falling. What one does when spinning through the air 

 for a second or less is not easily recalled ; but the de- 

 scent seemed a great deal longer than a minute. I can 

 only be sure that I started face downward, and came to 

 a short stop, with the sun shining in my face. I was 

 still six feet from the ground, lying at full length across 

 the densest growth of smilax on the farm. Now smi- 

 lax has thorns — a fact that had«never troubled me be- 

 fore; and these resented my abrupt intrusion by pene- 

 trating into and through my clothes, and beyond. This 

 may seem trivial as you read it, but do not test the mat- 

 ter. Accept my assurances that a thorn to every square 

 inch of one's back and limbs is not trivial; and when 

 smilax confronts you, go round, and not through it. 



Perhaps those who have so much to say about reclin- 

 ing on beds of roses, have never realized the accompani- 

 ment of thorns. Here was I upon a bed of thorns, with 

 no very rosy prospect of getting from it. There was 

 a cat - bird hard by who looked at me for a moment, 

 laughed, flirted his contemptuous tail, and departed. 

 The gesture was irritating. Man vaunts himself the 

 climax of animal creation ; yet this saucy cat-bird could, 

 without an effort, skip over the smilax, where I was 

 helpless. 



A happy thought struck me. I would crawl out of 

 my clothes ! Alas, that seemed only the beginning of 

 a reduction which would have no end before I had es- 

 caped from that piercing and clinging smilax, short of 

 having reduced myself to a bare, hard skeleton, and I 

 feared I never could put myself together again. What 

 was I to do 1 Planning on a bed of thorns, even if they 



