A LITTLE NOMAD 37 



peg down his largest tent more securely than he had ever 

 done before, and there in this safe shelter would change 

 to a pupa. When the leaf that had been the range of 

 this small nomad fell in the autumn he would go with 

 it; and wrapped in his tent rugs he would sleep his 

 winter sleep under the snow until he should awaken 

 next spring, no longer a tenter on leafy plains, but 

 a true child of the air. 



I tore off a bit of the leaf on which my little friend 

 had settled, and went over and pinned it to a leaf still 

 on the bush. It may have been an absurd thing to do, 

 but by this time I was shamelessly, nay, intrepidly 

 sentimental, and I did not wish that little chap to 

 starve because of my inborn tendency to meddle with 

 other people's affairs. I then fell from bad to worse 

 and began to moralize ; for when a naturalist falls to 

 moralizing science weeps. I meditated thus, " I came 

 here to get away from puzzling problems, and yet here 

 they are all around me ; the problems of the little 

 nomad ; the problems of the poor, leaf-lacerated maple ; 

 and if I look in other directions I will find more in 

 plenty." But for some sweet reason I did not feel 

 about problems as I did when I ran away and hid from 

 the noisy world two hours before. I was filled with 

 a new sense of the dignity and grandeur of this great 

 silent struggle for adjustment and supremacy which 



