THE WILD CRAB BLOSSOMING _ 83 
God thanks therefor) and this day, so now must 
I proceed to make the pomp of emperors ridic- 
ulous. If Emerson could, why not I? I too 
have transcendental moments—times when I 
walk the sky like the winged things. 
So I forage. That is the preamble of a day 
in the sunlight and shade. Hunger and good 
time are not true friends. A day of wonder, 
to have its way with you, must be let alone. 
The gnawings of hunger, or even the solicita- 
tions of hunger, are not helpers. They distract 
the mind. They detract from the wonder over- 
arching all. I can read “The Ode to Immor- 
tality” better when I am unhungry. Hunger 
attracts attention to itself. So, not as hailing 
from Sybaris, do I, one of God’s common people, 
go foraging ere I go Juning up and down the 
world. I am a simple son of the soil and the 
sun and know that a bit of bacon cooked at the 
end of a stick over a sweetly smelling fire of 
last year’s leaves and many a year’s branches 
will help the sky and the wind and the swaying 
shadows to have their say with the bacon-ee. 
In eating “under the greenwood tree” (as says 
Shakespeare), and “far from the madding crowd” 
(as says Gray in the “Elegy’’), I shall not be 
pampering the flesh but liberating the spirit. 
I shall be drying the gadfly’s wings, so to say, 
so that he may make rainbows above some 
drowsy brook. 
