EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 237 
ize better with the landscape than his black 
and glossy india-rubbers. I had a suit once 
in which, methinks, I could glide across the 
fields unperceived half a mile in front of a 
farmer’s windows. It was such a skillful mix¬ 
ture of browns, dark and light, properly propor¬ 
tioned, with even some threads of green in it, 
by chance. It was of loose texture and about 
the color of a pasture with patches of withered 
sweet fern and lechea. I trusted a good deal 
to my invisibility in it when going across lots, 
and many a time I was aware that to it I owed 
the near approach of wild animals. 
No doubt my dusty and tawny cowhides sur¬ 
prise the street walkers who wear patent leather 
congress shoes, but they do not consider how 
absurd such shoes would be in my vocation to 
thread the woods and swamps in. C—— was 
saying properly enough the other day, as we 
were making our way through a dense patch of 
shrub oak, “ I suppose that those villagers 
think we wear these old, worn hats with holes 
all along the corners for oddity ; but Coombs, 
the musquash hunter and partridge and rabbit 
snarer, knows better. He understands us. He 
knows that a new and square-cornered hat 
would be spoiled in one excursion through the 
shrub oaks.” When a citizen comes to take a 
walk with me, I commonly find that he is lame 
