74 



AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



the memory the many, many squirrel hunts of years 

 ago, and is the symbol of all that is picturesque and 

 pioneer-like and romantic In the past. 



The boys of late have taken the old rifle down and 

 soaked it in coal-oil and cleaned it thoroughly, and 

 have got out the old bullet mold and made a lot of 

 bullets; and it again does duty, they tell me, and shoots 

 pretty nearly where you want it to, although, like a 

 veteran, it is old and tottering and outnumbered. I 

 have not heard of many of the wild creatures of the 

 woods losing their lives from it in the hands of its 

 present marksmen, but then that is not the fault of the 

 old rifle. It is ready still for the hand that knows its 

 cunning. 



Yes! let us take down the old rifle and be always 

 among the trees. Let us seek contentment in the seclu- 

 sion and wildness of the forest, and let us ever keep 

 alive in us the old hunting instinct, which in youth 

 would rise up in our hearts at the first whiff of autumn, 

 and which in old age will bring back the days of youth; 

 and, with rifle on shoulder and powder-horn slung at 

 our sides, let us seek again the old perfect life which 

 still lurks somewhere in the great woods, and in the 

 beautiful eyes of the doe and gray squirrel, and in the 

 mystery and romance about the camp-fire. 



Thoughts of the old times come back upon me in 

 a flood of vaguest suggestion and sadness — thoughts of 

 grandfather and grandmother, of the old-fashioned 

 sugar camps, and of the great fields of wheat and the 

 old reaping sickles; and I seem to live again in the 

 past — the past, with its distaff and spindle, its home- 



