In the old woods road a soft haze hung, too subtle to see save where its delicate colorings were contrasted against the dark green leaves of the oaks beyond the fence. Not the tangible, vapory haze of early morning, but a tinted, ethereal haze, the visible effluence of the summer, the nimbus of its power and glory. From tall cord grasses arching over the side of the road, drawing water from the ditch in which their feet were bathed and breathing it into the air with the scent of their own greenness; from the transpiration of the trees, shrubs and vines, flowers and mosses and ferns, from billions of pores in acres of leaves it came streaming into the sunlight, vanishing quickly, yet ever renewed, as surely as the little brook where the grasses drank and the grackles fished for tadpoles and young frogs, was replenished by the hidden spring. Mingled with it and floating in it was another stream of life, the innumerable living organisms that make up the dust of the sunshine. Pink and white, black and yellow spores from the mushrooms over the fence in the pasture; pollen pushed from the glumes of the red top grasses and the lilac spires of the hedge nettle and germander by the roadside; shoals of spores from the mosses and ferns by the trees and in the swamp; all these life particles rose and floated in the haze, giving it tints and meanings strangely sweet. When a farmer's buggy passed along the old road the haze became a warm pink, like some western sky in the evening, slowly clearing again to turquoise as the dust settled. Viewed in this way, the haze became a mighty, broad-mouthed river of life, fed by billions of tiny streams and moving ever toward the vast ocean of the sunlight. Faintly visible to the discerning eye, it was also audible to the attentive ear, listening as one listens at the edge of a field in the night time to hear the growing of the corn. If all the millions of leaves had ceased their transpiration, if this flow of life had been shut off, as the organist pushes in the tremolo stop, the sound of the summer would not have been the same. Something of the strength and joy of the summer was in it. Drinking deeply of it the body was invigorated and the heart grew glad. In it the faith of the winter's buds and the hope of the spring's tender leaves found rich fulfillment. Theirs was a life of hope and promise that the resurrection should come; this was the glorious life after the resurrection, faith lost in sight and patient hope crowned.

Slender white minarets of the Culver's root, rising from green towers above the leafy architecture of the woodland undergrowth and reaching toward the light of the sky, told the time of the year as plainly as if a muezzin had appeared on one of its leafy balconies and proclaimed a namaz for the middle of July. Beholding them from afar, honey bees came on humming wings for the nectar lying deep in their tiny florets. Eager stamens reached out far beyond the blossoms to brush the bees' backs with precious freights of pollen to be transported to the stigmas of older flowers. Playing each its part in the plan of the universe, flower and insect added its mite to the life and the loveliness of the summer. From the sunshine and the soil-water the long leaves manufactured food for the growth of the plant. Prettily notched, daintily tapering, and arranged in star-like whorls about the stem, they enhanced the beauty of the flowers above them and attracted the observer to the exquisite order governing their growth. When the leaves were arranged in whorls of four, the floral spires were quadruple, like the pinnacles on a church tower; if the green towers were hexagonal, then six white minarets pointed to the sky. The perfect order of the solar system and the majesty of the Mind which planned it, was manifested in this single plant. So does beauty lead the way to the mountain tops of truth. By the road of earthly beauty we may always reach religion and truth is ever beckoning us to new and nobler visions. That "thread of the all-sustaining beauty, which runs through all and doth all unite" gently leads us from the things which are tangible and temporal to the truths which are spiritual and eternal; from the beauty of the concrete to the beauty of the abstract, onward along the road of beauty and farther up the heights of truth until our admiration for the beauty of the sunrise, the snow crystal, the graceful spray of the trees in winter, the exquisite order and harmony of the universe from the orbit of the largest planet to the flow of life in the tiniest leaf, develops into a lasting love for beauty in life and in character; and still farther up the heights into an atmosphere of intelligent, rational, genuine love for the Great First Cause of all beauty. As the heart opens to receive the beauty of the world, as the mind and soul strive, like the plants, for the highest development, so is the world redeemed from error and crime and the perfection of the race is attained. If one soul finds this truth more quickly and easily here amid the trees and flowers, for him is the old road greater than religious dogmas or social systems.

Always beautiful and interesting, in these long days of mid-July the old road is at its best. No length of day can measure its loveliness or encompass its charm. Very early in the morning there is a faint rustle of the leaves, a delicate flutter through the woods as if the awakening birds are shaking out their wings. Shrubs and bushes and trunks of trees have ghostly shapes in the few strange moments that are neither the darkness nor the dawn. As the light steals through the woods their forms grow less grotesque. In the half light a phoebe begins her shrill song. A blue-jay screams. The quail sounds his first "Bob White." Brown thrashers in the thicket—it is past their time of singing—respond with a strange, sibilant sound, a mingled hiss and whistle, far different from his ringing songs of May, now only memories; different also from her scoldings when she was disturbed on her nest and from her tender crooning calls to her babies during June.

As the light increases waves of delicate color appear in the sky to the northeast, and by and by the sun's face appears over the tops of the trees. He shoots arrows of pale flame through the woods. In the clearing the trunks of the trees are like cathedral pillars, and the sunlight comes down in slanting rays as if the openings among the tree-tops were windows and the blue haze beneath the incense of the morning mass. Black-capped precentor of the avian choir, the chickadee sounds two sweet tones, clear and musical, like keynotes blown from a silver pipe. The wood thrush sounds a few organ tones, resonant and thrilling. It is almost his last summer service; soon, like the thrashers, he will be drooping and silent. The chewink, the indigo bird, the glad goldfinches, the plaintive pewees are the sopranos; the blue-bird, the quail, with her long, sweet call, and the grosbeak, with his mellow tones, are the altos; the nuthatch and the tanager take up the tenor, while the red-headed woodpeckers, the crows and the cuckoos bear down heavy on the bass. Growing with the light, the fugue swells into crescendo. Lakes of sunshine and capes of shadow down the old road are more sharply defined. Bushes of tall, white melilot, clustered with myriads of tiny flowers, exhale a sweet fragrance into the morning air. The clearing around the house is flooded with sunlight. In the wooded pasture some trunks are bathed with a golden glory, while others yet stand iron gray in the deep shadows. The world is awake. The day's work begins. One late young redhead in a hole high up in the decaying trunk of an aspen tree calls loudly for his breakfast, redoubling his noise as his mother approaches with the first course. Sitting clumsily on a big stump, a big baby cowbird, well able to shift for himself, shamelessly takes food from his little field sparrow foster-mother, scarcely more than half his size. Soon he will leave her and join the flocks of his kindred in the oat-fields and the swamps. Young chewinks are being fed down among the ripening May-apples in the pasture. A catbird with soft "quoots" assembles her family in the hazel and the wood-thrush sounds warning "quirts" as fancied peril approaches her children beneath the ripening blackberries. From the top of a tall white oak a red squirrel leaps to the arching branches of an elm, continuing his foraging there. Sitting straight up on a mossy log the chipmunk holds in his paws a bit of bread thrown from somebody's basket, nibbles at it for a while and then makes a dash for the thicket, carrying the bread in his mouth.

Tiny rabbits venture out from the tall grasses and look on life with timid eyes. Bees and butterflies are busy with the day's work. Life with its beauty and its joy is everywhere abundant. Living things swim in and upon the brook, insects run and leap among the grasses, winged creatures are in the shrubs, the trees, the air, active, eager, beautiful life is everywhere. The heart thrills with the beauty, the joy, the zest, the abundance of it, expands to a capacity for the amplitude of it. Human life grows sweeter, richer, more worth while. There is so much to live for, so much to hope for; this is the meaning and the glory of the summer.

Farther out, where the old road leaves the woods, the landscape is like a vast park, more beautiful than many a park which the world calls famous. From the crest of the ridge the fields roll away in graceful curves, dotted with comfortable homes and groves and skirted by heavy timber down in the valley where the sweet water of the river moves quietly over the white sand. Still responding to the freshening impulse of the June rains, fields and woods are all a-quiver with growth. By master magic soil-water and sunshine are being changed into color and form to delight the eye and food to do the world's work. Every tree is a picture, each leaf is as fresh and clean as the rain-washed air of the morning. From the low meadows the perfume of the hay is brought up by the languid breeze. Amber oat-fields are ripening in the sun and in the corn-fields there is a sense of the gathering force of life as the sturdy plants lift themselves higher and higher during

Many a tourist comes home to a land like this, weary and penniless, like Sir Launfal after his fruitless quest, to discover that the grail of health and rest and beauty which he sought afar so strenuously is most easily and readily found at home.

Ceaselessly up and down the old road passes the pageant of the year, never two days the same, especially at this season. In the middle of the road is a dirt wagon-track, on either side of which is a broad belt of grass, flowers, shrubs and small trees till you come to the fence. Beyond one fence the thick woods has a heavy undergrowth; over the other is a well-wooded pasture. On the south side, between the road and the fence there is a little brook, sometimes with a high, mossy and timbered bank, sometimes completely hidden by tall grasses. The road rises and falls in gentle grades, with alternating banks and swales. At one high point there is a view down the long avenue of trees across the open valley beyond, where the city lies snugly, and then upward to the timber on the far heights across the river where the hills are always softly blue, no matter what the season of the year. Sometimes the old road sweeps around fine old trees in unmathematical curves which add much to its wild beauty. The first man who drove along it, a hundred years or more ago, followed a cow-path and the road hasn't changed much since, though the fences which were later threaded through the shrubs and trees on either side, run straighter. Never was summer day long enough for me to see and to study all that the old road had to show. Here, at the moist edge of the road, the ditch stone-crop is opening its yellow-green flowers, each one a study in perfect symmetry. With the showy, straw-colored cyperus it flourishes under the friendly shade of the overhanging cord-grasses whose flowering stalks already have shot up beyond the reach of a man. Among them grows the tall blue vervain, its tapering fingers adorned with circles of blue flowers, like sapphire rings passing from the base to the tips of the fingers. You must part these grasses and pass through them to see the thicket of golden-rod making ready for the yellow festival later on. White cymes of spicy basil are mingled with the purple loosestrife and back of these the fleabanes lift daisy-like heads among the hazel overhanging the wire fence. Then the elms and the oaks and in the openings the snowy, starry campion whose fringed petals are beginning to close, marking the morning's advance. In the moist places the Canada lily glows like a flaming torch, its pendant bells slowly swinging in the breeze, ringing in the annual climax and jubilee of the flowering season.

Across the road the monkey flower grins affably at the edge of the grass and the water hemlock, with a hollow stem as big as a gun-barrel and tall as a man, spreads its large umbels of tiny white flowers on curving branches like a vase-shaped elm in miniature. Twice or thrice pinnate leaves, toothed like a tenon saw, with conspicuous veins ending in the notches, brand it as the beaver poison, otherwise known as the musquash root and spotted cowbane. From its tuberous roots was prepared the poison which Socrates drank without fear; why should he fear death? Does he not still live among us? Does he not question us, teach us? Yellow loose-strifes and rattle-box are in the swamp, and a patch of swamp milkweed with brilliant fritillaries sipping nectar from its purple blossoms. White wands of meadow-sweet, clusters of sensitive fern, a big shrub of pussy willow with cool green leaves as grateful now as the white and gold blossoms were in April; white trunks and fluttering leaves of small aspens where the grosbeak has just finished nesting; bushy willows and withes of young poplar; nodding wool-grasses and various headed sedges; all these are between the roadside and the fence. There the elder puts out blossoms of spicy snow big as dinner-plates and the Maryland yellow-throat who has four babies in the bulky nest at the foot of the black-berry bush sits and sings his "witchity, witchity, witchity." The lark sparrow has her nest at the foot of a thistle and her mate has perched so often on a small elm near-by that he has worn several of the leaves from a topmost twig. In the late afternoons and evenings he sits there and vies with the indigo bunting who sits on the bare branches at the top of a tall red oak, throwing back his little head and pouring out sweet rills of melody. Near him is the dickcissel, incessantly singing from the twig of a crab-apple; these three make a tireless trio, singing each hour of the day. The bunting's nest is in a low elm bush close to the fence where a wee brown bird sits listening to the strains of the bright little bird above and the little dickcissels have just hatched out in the nest at the base of a tussock not very far away.

Now the evening primrose at the side of the road has folded all its yellow petals, marking the near approach of noon. Growing near it on this rise of the road are lavender-flowered bergamot, blue and gold spiderwort, milkweeds in a purple glory, black-eyed Susans basking in the sun, cone-flowers with brown disks and purple petals, like gypsy maidens with gaudy summer shawls. Closer to the fence are lemon-yellow coreopsis with quaint, three-cleft leaves; thimble weeds with fruit columns half a finger's length; orange-flowered milkweed, like the color of an oriole's back, made doubly gay by brilliant butterflies and beetles. On the sandy bank which makes the background for this scene of splendor, the New Jersey tea, known better as the red-root, lifts its feathery white plumes above restful, gray-green leaves. Just at the fence the prairie willow has a beauty all its own, with a wealth of leaves glossy dark green above and woolly white below.

There's a whine as if someone had suddenly struck a dog and a brownish bird runs crouching through the grass while little gingery-brown bodies scatter quickly for their hiding places. It was near here that the quail had her nest in June and these are her babies. I reach down and get one, a little bit of a chick scarcely bigger than the end of my thumb. The mother circles around, quite near, with alarm and distress until I back away and watch. Then she comes forward, softly clucking, and soon gathers her chickens under her wings.

Similar behavior has the ruffed grouse which you may still find occasionally in the deeper woods. Stepping over the fallen tree you send the little yellow-brown babies scattering, like fluffy golf-balls rolling for cover. Invariably the old bird utters a cry of pain and distress, puts her head down low and skulks off through the grass and ferns while the chicks hasten to hide themselves. Your natural inclination is to follow the mother, and then she will take very short flights, alternated with runs in the grass, until she has led you far from her family. Then a whirr of strong wings and she is gone back to the cover where she clucks them together. But if you first turn your attention to the chicks the mother will turn on her trail, stretch out her long, broad, banded tail into a beautiful fan, ruffle up the feathers on either side of her neck and come straight towards you. Often she will stretch her neck and hiss at you like a barn-yard goose. There is a picture of the ruffed grouse worth while. You will learn more about the ruffed grouse in an experience like this than you can find in forty books. If you pause to admire this turkey-gobbler attitude of the grouse she thinks she has succeeded in attracting your attention. The tail fan closes and droops, the wings fall, the ruffs smooth down. With her head close to the ground, she once more attempts to lead you from her children. If you are heartless enough you may again hunt for the chicks and back will come the old bird again, almost to your feet, with feathers all outstretched.

Creamy clusters of the bunch-flower rise from the brink of the brook and near-by there are the large leaves of the arrow-head, with its interesting stalk, bearing homely flowers below and interesting chalices of white and gold above. Shining up through the long grasses, the five-pointed white stars of the little marsh bell-flower are no more dismayed by the stately beauty of the tall blue bell-flower over the fence, with its long strings of blossoms set on edge like dainty Delft-blue saucers, than the Pleiades are shamed by the splendor of Aldebaran and Betelguese on a bright night in November. Clover-like heads of the milkwort decorate the bank, and among the mosses around the bases of the trees the little shin-leaf lifts its pretty white racemes.

Twisting and twining among the hazel, long stems of wild yam display pretty leaves in graceful strings, each leaf set at the angle which secures the greatest amount of light. On the wire fence the bittersweet hangs and reaches from thence to the top of the low hawthorne, seeking the strength of the sun for the ripening of its pods, which slowly change from green to yellow as the month advances. Thickly-prickled stems of green-brier, the wild smilax, rise to the height of the choke-cherry shrubs and the branches lift themselves by means of two tendrils on each leaf-stalk to the most favorable positions for the sunlight. Under these broad leaves the catbird is concealed. Elegant epicurean, he is sampling the ripening choke-cherries. He complains querulously at being disturbed, flirts his tail and flies. Stout branches of sumac, with bark colored and textured much like brown egg-shell, sustain a canopy of wild grape, the clusters of green fruit only partly hidden by the broad leaves. Curiously beautiful are the sumac's leaves, showing long leaf-stalks of pink purple and pretty leaflets strung regularly on either side. The sumac's fruit, unlike the grape's, seeks no concealment; proudly lifting its glowing torches above the leafy canopy, it lights the old road for the passing of the pageant of summer. From greenish gold to scarlet, swiftly changing to carmine, terra cotta, crimson and garnet, so glows and deepens the color in the torches. When comes the final garnet glow not even the cold snows of winter can quench it.

Around the fence-post, where the versi-colored fungus grows, the moon-seed winds its stems, like strands of twine. Its broad leaves are set like tilted mirrors to catch and reflect the light. Trailing among the grass the pea-vine lifts itself so that its blossoms next month shall attract the bees. The wild hop is reaching over the bushes for the branches of the low-growing elm from which to hang its fruit clusters. Circling up the trunk and the spreading branches of the elm, the Virginia creeper likewise strives for better and greater light. Flower and vine, shrub and tree, each with its own peculiar inherited tendencies resulting from millions of years of development, strives ever for perfection. Shall man, with the civilization of untold centuries at his back to push him on, do less? Endowed with mind and heart, with spiritual aspirations and a free will, shall he dare cease to grow? Equipped so magnificently for the light, dare he deliberately seek the darkness and allow his mental and spiritual fruits to wither? These are questions to ponder as the afternoon shadows lengthen.

If you walk through the wooded pasture, close by the side of the roadside fence, the hollow stumps hold rain-water, like huge tankards for a feast. Sometimes a shaft of sunlight shoots into the water, making it glow with color. Fungi in fantastic shapes are plentiful. Growing from the side of a stump, the stem of the fawn-colored pluteus bends upwards to the light. Golden clavarias cover fallen trunks with coral masses and creamy ones are so delicately fragile that you almost fear to touch them lest you mar their beauty. Brown brackets send out new surfaces of creamy white on which the children may stencil their names. That vivid yellow on a far stump is the sulphur-colored polyporus. Green and red Russulas delight the eye. The lactaria sheds hot, white milk when you cut it, and the inky coprinus sheds black rain of its own accord. Puff-balls scatter their spores when you smite them and the funnel-shaped clitocybe holds water as a wine-glass holds Sauterne.

Springing from a log lying by the fence a dozen plants of the glistening coprinus have reared themselves since morning, fresh from the rain and flavored as sweet as a nut. Narrow furrows and sharp ridges adorn their drooping caps; these in turn are decorated with tiny shining scales. Nibbling at the nut-like flesh, I am touched with the nicety, the universality of nature's appeal to the finer senses and sentiments. Here is form and color and sparkle to please the eye, flesh tender to the touch, aroma that tests the subtlest sense of smell, taste that recalls stories of Epicurean feasts, millions of life-germs among the purple-black gills, ready to float in the streams of the atmosphere to distant realms and other cycles of life. No dead log and toadstools are here, but dainty shapes with billions of possibilities for new life, new beauties, new thoughts.

Goldfinches ride on the billows of the air, now folding their pinions and shooting silently downward into the trough of the sea, then opening their wings and beating their way upwards, singing meanwhile. Going over the woods they fly twenty to thirty feet above the tops of the tallest trees, but when they reach the meadow lands they drop to about the same height above the surface of the ground. Only a few of them are nesting yet. The tall thistle by the roadside is nearly ten feet high, but its heads have not fully opened. They like its down for their nests and its seeds to feed the fledgelings. They fly in pairs often and in the evenings they cling prettily to the catnip by the pasture fence, digging into each calyx for its four sweet nutlets. The woodthrush has a late nest in a young elm; her first family was eaten by the blue-jays just after the hatching,—so were the young grosbeaks in a nearby tree, but the cedar waxwings were slain and eaten by the cannibalistic grackles. A blue-jay is just approaching the wood pewee's nest in the burr oak, but the doughty husband does battle with the fierceness of a kingbird and chases him away. Three tiny birdlings, covered with hairs soft and white as the down of a thistle, are in the nest, which is saddled snugly to the fork of a horizontal tree. In another nest, near by, the three eggs have only just been laid. The path which used to run under the over-hanging trees is grown up with grasses. Here the slender rush grows best, and makes a dark crease among the taller and lighter-green grasses, showing where the path winds. Twenty feet overhead, on the slender branch of a white oak, is a tiny knot, looking scarcely larger than the cup of a mossy-cup acorn. It is the nest of the ruby-throated hummingbird, so well concealed by the leaves and by the lichens fastened to its exterior that it would not have been noticed at all but for the whirling wings of the exquisite creature a month ago. Her two tiny eggs have since been safely hatched and the young birds reared; now the nest is empty, a prize to be taken and preserved for future study and admiration.

At the foot of a figwort stalk in the pasture, shielded by a little sprig of choke-cherry and a wisp of grasses, a new nest is being builded. That is why the chewink sings so happily from dawn till dark. His summer song is now heard more often than his spring song. Through April, May and June he sings:

Fah do do'-do'-do'-do'-do'

But now, this song is heard more often:

Me' fah'-fah'-fah'-fah'-fah'

This song is more appropriate to the summer. There is more of fullness and beauty in it, more of the quality of the woodthrush's songs, for which it is often mistaken.

From a tiny hawthorne bush, no higher than a collie's back, a field sparrow flies nervously to a low limb of a hickory tree and begs that her nest be not disturbed. It is neatly placed in the middle of the bush about a foot from the ground, made of medium grasses and rootlets and lined with finer grasses and horsehair. The three bluish-white eggs with rufous markings at the larger end are the field-sparrow's own. Into a nest found a month ago, at the foot of a yarrow stalk, the cowbird had sneaked three speckled eggs, leaving only one of the pretty eggs of the field-sparrow. At that time the cowbirds were to be seen everywhere; they chattered every morning in the trees, and the females left their unwelcome eggs in nearly every nest. One little red-eyed vireo's nest had five cowbirds' eggs,—none of her own. But the birds which are building now are generally safe from the parasite. Only rarely is a cowbird's egg found after the middle of July. No cowbirds have been seen since the first week of the month, save the young one on the stump, which the field-sparrow was feeding this morning. They disappear early, seeking seclusion for the moulting. When they emerge from their hiding places they form into flocks, spending their days in the grain-fields and near the rivers where the food is most abundant and easy to procure. At nightfall they congregate, like the red-winged blackbirds, in the sand-bar willows on the river islands.

Daintily flitting from one branch to another, the redstart weaves threads of reddish gold and black, like strands of night and noon, among the old trees. He has wandered over through the woods from the creek, where his mate built a cup-like nest in a crotch toward the top of a slender white oak. Busy always, he stays but a few moments and then passes on as silently as a July zephyr. The halting voice of the preacher, the red-eyed vireo, comes out of the thicket; then, from an oak overhead, where a little twig is trembling, the softer voice of the warbling vireo queries: "Can't you see it's best to sing and work like me?", with the emphasis on the "me."

Blue-jays loiter down the old road, making short flights from tree to tree, moving in the one plane and with slowly beating wings; only rarely do they fold their wings and dip. Redheads and flickers, like the other woodpeckers, have a slightly dipping flight. They open and close their wings in quick succession, not slowly like the goldfinches; consequently their dips are not so pronounced. The line of their flight is a ripple rather than a billow.

Chickadee and his family come chattering through the pasture. They had a felt-lined nest in a fence-post during the warm days of June; now they find life easy and sweet—sweet as the two notes mingled with their chatter. Upside down they cling to the swaying twigs, romping, disheveled bird-children, full of fun and song-talk. It is nothing to them that the cruel winds and deep snows of winter will be here all too soon. Summer days are long and joyous, life stretches out before them; why waste its hours with frets and fears about the future? Another round of merry chatter and away they flit. Scarcely have they gone until a blood-red streak shoots down from the elm tree to the grass. It is the scarlet tanager. For the last half-hour his loud notes, tied together in twos, have been ringing from an ash tree in the pasture, near the spreading oak where the mother sat so closely during June. Though the nesting season is over he will sing for some weeks yet.

So they come and go through the happy golden hours; now the nasal notes of the nuthatch or the "pleek" of a downy woodpecker in the pasture, followed by the twittering tones of the chimney-swifts zigzagging across the sea of blue above, like busy tugboats darting from side to side of a harbor. Crows string over the woods close to the tops of the trees, watching with piercing eyes for lone and hapless fledglings. A cuckoo droops from a tall wild cherry tree on one side of the road to a tangle of wild grape on the other; he peers out and gives his rain-crow call. So is the warp of the summer woven of bird-flight and threaded through with song.

When evening comes the sun's last smiles reach far into the timber and linger lovingly on the boles of the trees with a tender beauty. Wood-flowers face the vanishing light and hold it until the scalloped edges of the oak leaves etched against the sky have been blurred by the gathering darkness. Long streams of cinnabar and orange flare up in the western sky. Salmon-colored clouds float into sight, grow gray and gradually melt away. In the dusky depths of the woods the thrush sings his thrilling, largo appassionato, requiem to the dying day. In this part of the thicket the catbirds congregate, but over yonder the brown thrashers are calling to each other. The "skirl" of the nighthawk ceases; but away through the woods, down at the creek, the whippoorwill begins her oft-repeated trinity of notes. A hoot owl calls from a near-by tree. The pungent smoke of the wood-fire is sweeter than incense. Venus hangs like a silver lamp in the northwest. She, too, disappears, but to the east Mars—it is the time of his opposition—shines in splendor straight down the old road, seemingly brought very near by the telescopic effect of the dark trees on either side. Sister stars look down in limpid beauty from a cloudless sky. All sounds have ceased. A fortnight hence the air will be vibrant with the calls of the katydids and the grasshoppers, but now the silence is supreme. It is good for man sometimes to be alone in the silence of the night—to pass out from the world of little things, temporary affairs, conditional duties, into the larger life of nature. There may be some feeling of chagrin at the thought how easily man passes out of the world and how readily and quickly he is forgotten; but this is of small moment compared with the sense of self reliance, of sturdy independence, which belongs to the out-of-doors. By the light of the stars the non-essentials of life are seen in their true proportions. There are so many things which have only a commercial value, and even that is uncertain. Why strive for them or worry about them? In nature there is a noble indifference to everything save the attainment of the ideal. Flattery aids not an inch to the growth of a tendril, blame does not take one tint from the sky. In nature is the joy of living, of infinite, eternal life. Her eternity is now, today, this hour. Each of her creatures seeks the largest, fullest, best life possible under given conditions. The wild raspberries on which the catbirds were feeding today would have been just as fine had there been no catbird to eat them or human eye to admire them. Had there been no human ear to delight, the song of the woodthrush would have been just as sweet. The choke-cherries crimsoning in the summer sun, the clusters of the nuts swelling among the leaves of the hickory will strive to attain perfection, whether or no there are human hands to gather them. They live in beauty, simplicity and serenity, all-sufficient in themselves to achieve their ends.

Let me live by the old road among the flowers and the trees, the same old road year after year, yet new with the light of each morning. Shirking not my share of the world's work, let me gather comfort from the cool grasses and the restful shade of the old road, hope and courage from the ever-recurring miracle of the morning and the springtime, inspiration to strive nobly toward a high ideal of perfection. They are talking of improving the old road. They will build pavements on either side, and a trim park in the middle, where strange shrubs from other states will fight for life with the tall, rank weeds which always tag the heels of civilization. Then let me live farther out,—always just beyond the last lamp on the outbound road, like Omar Khayyam in his strip of herbage, where there are no improvements, no conventionalities, where life is as large as the world and where the sweet sanities and intimacies of nature are as fresh and abundant as the dew of the morning. Rather than the pavements, let me see the holes of the tiger-beetles in the dirt of the road, the funnels of the spiders leading down to the roots of the grass and their cobwebs spread like ladies' veils, each holding dozens of round raindrops from the morning shower, as a veil might hold a handful of gleaming jewels. Let me still take note of the coming of the months by the new flower faces which greet me, each taking their proper place in the pageant of the year. Old memories of friends and faces, old joys and hopes and loves flash and fade among the shrubs and the flowers—here we found the orchis, there we gathered the gentians, under this oak the friend now sleeping spoke simply of his faith and hope in a future, sweeter summer, when budding thoughts and aspirations should blossom into fadeless beauty and highest ideals be attained. Let me watch the same birds building the same shapely homes in the old familiar bushes and listen to the old sweet songs, changeless through the years. If the big thistle is rooted out, where shall the lark sparrow build her nest? If the dirt road is paved, how shall the yellow-hammers have their sand-baths in the evening, while the half grown rabbits frisk around them? Sweet the hours spent in living along the old road—let my life be simpler, that I may spend more time in living and less in getting a living. There are so many things deemed essential that really are not necessary at all. One hour of new thought is better than them all. Let the days be long enough for the zest and joy of work, for the companionship of loved ones and friends, for a little time loafing along the old road when the day's work is done. Let me hear the sibilant sounds of the thrashers as they settle to sleep in the thicket. Give me the fragrance of the milkweed at evening. Let me see the sunset glow on the trunks of the trees, the ruby tints lingering on the boulder brought down by the glaciers long ago; the little bats that weave their way beneath the darkening arches of the leafy roof, while the fire-flies are lighting their lamps in the nave of the sylvan sanctuary. When the afterglow has faded and the blur of night has come, give me the old, childlike faith and assurance that tomorrow's sun shall rise again, and that by-and-by, in the same sweet way, there shall break the first bright beams of Earth's Eternal Easter morning.