256 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
and all men of money, I go in search of arrow¬ 
heads when the season comes round again. So 
I help myself to live worthily, loving my life 
as I should. It is a good collyrium to look on 
the bare earth, to pore over it so much, getting 
strength to all your senses, like Antaeus. You 
can hardly name a more innocent or wholesome 
entertainment. As I am thus engaged I hear the 
rumble of the bowling-alley’s thunder, which 
has begun again in the village. It comes before 
the earliest natural thunder. But what its 
lightning is, and what atmospheres it purifies, I 
do not know. .... I have not decided whether 
I had better publish my experience in searching 
for arrowheads in three volumes with plates, or 
try to compress it into one. These durable im¬ 
plements seem to have been suggested to the In¬ 
dian mechanic with a view to my entertainment 
in a succeeding period. After all the labor ex¬ 
pended on it, the bolt may have been shot but 
once, perchance, and the shaft, once attached to 
it, decayed, and there lay the arrowhead, sink¬ 
ing into the ground, awaiting me. They lie all 
over the hills with like expectation, and in due 
time the husbandman is sent, and, tempted by 
the promise of corn or rye, he plows the land 
and turns them up to my view. Many as I 
have found, metliinks the last one gave me about 
the same delight that the first did. Some time 
