26o In Touch with Nature. 



the inferences of the most prominent men in th( 

 line are but too apt to fall upon deaf ears. 



As men like Fenny deciphered it, this woi 

 was thoroughly intelligible to them. They we 

 all deists, of course, and delved no more deep 

 into matters spiritual. There was a tendency 

 spiritualism of the modern kind, because so mu- 

 was beyond their comprehension, so unsolvat 

 to them, but plain to the learned. This gave the 

 their poetry, and their lives were full of it ; b 

 this feeling extended beyond such things to t 

 trivial incidents of every-day life. Fenny wo 

 upon his little finger a rudely-carved bone rir 

 I once questioned him about it, and, holding 

 before him, he said, with a strange change of voi( 

 " It's nothin' of itself, but the sunshiny days of o 

 summer come back whenever I look at it." 



But let us take a walk with Fenny in the woo< 

 If he did not know a tree botanically he did pra 

 tically. He laid no claim to why or how t 

 growth was thus and so, but he did know wl 

 every tree passed through from the sprouting 

 the seed to maturity. His knowledge shone wi 

 positive splendor when he remarked, " That tre 



