62 BIRDS AND POETS 



I once saw a cow that had lost her cud. How 

 forlorn and desolate and sick at heart that cow 

 looked ! No more rumination, no more of that sec- 

 ond and finer mastication, no more of that sweet 

 and juicy revery under the spreading trees, or in 

 the stall. Then the farmer took an elder and 

 scraped the bark and put something with it, and 

 made the cow a cud, and, after due waiting, the ex- 

 periment took, a response came back, and the mys- 

 terious machinery was once more in motion, and the 

 cow was herself again. 



Have you, O poet, or essayist, or story-writer, 

 never lost your cud, and wandered about days and 

 weeks without being able to start a single thought 

 or an image that tasted good, — your literary appetite 

 dull or all gone, and the conviction daily growing 

 that it is all over with you in that direction ? A 

 little elder-bark, something fresh and bitter from 

 the woods, is about the best thing you can take. 



XIV 



Notwithstanding what I have elsewhere said about 

 the desolation of snow, when one looks closely it 

 is little more than a thin veil after all, and takes 

 and repeats the form of whatever it covers. Every 

 path through the fields is just as plain as before. 

 On every hand the ground sends tokens, and the 

 curves and slopes are not of the snow, but of the 

 earth beneath. In like manner the rankest vegeta- 



