JUNE O’ THE YEAR 159 
river and the marshes and the meadows, home- 
like with grazing cattle and the farmer making 
hay on the lush meadows. And over the soft 
ground as we come the wild strawberries grow 
and the wind makes all the wild flowers dance 
with glee. One of my sweet voyagers gathers 
flowers and is a picture of dear delight to my 
heart. Her dress blows in the wind and she, 
stooping to pick the flowers, is a picture no 
painter could paint. And still the wild straw- 
berries are everywhere. Well, this is paradise. 
The meadow lark calls from the grasses; the kill- 
deer shambles about the sky with plaintive call; the 
bobolinks are at June rapture and invade the blue 
sky with their ecstasy and flutter to the meadow all 
music, which though a body were a sphinx he 
would be sure to be caught in the rapture of: 
O it is June o’ the year! 
And here I, the chef extraordinary, gather 
pine branches and light the fire and proceed to 
cook the steak while the women are gadding 
about the meadow lit with flowers with the 
swift wonder of the swaying grasses in the wind. 
A man nowadays has no time to go gadding 
about with beauty. He must be body servant 
to beauty, and so I here with the pine music 
over me and the shadows of the beech trees not 
far away, and the wind making merry with my 
hair, which has no hat, I lean to my task like 
a galley slave chained to the oar. Such is the 
lot of man; but I am a good cook and a Christian 
