A Man and a Woman | Page 8

you noted the
wild bees in countless myriads working upon its surface and gathering
from each tiny flower's heart that which makes the clearest and purest
and most wine-like of all honey? Have you stood at the forest's edge,
perched high upon a fence, maybe of trees felled into a huge windrow
when first the field was cleared, or else of rails of oak or ash, both
black and white--the black ash lasts the longer, for worms invade the
white--and looked upon a field of growing Indian corn, the green
spread of it deep and heaving, and noted the traces of the forest's
tax-collectors left about its margins: the squirrel's dainty work and the
broken stalks and stripped ears upon the ground, leavings of the old
raccoon, the small bear of the forest, knowing enough to become a
friend of man when caught and tamed, and almost human in his ways,

as curious as a scandal-monger and selfish as a money-lender?
Have you gone into the hard maple wood, the sugar bush, in early
spring, the time of frosty nights and sunny days, and driven home the
gouge and spile, and gathered the flowing sap and boiled it in such pots
and kettles as later pioneers have owned, and gained such
wildwood-scented product as no confectioner of the town may ever
hope to equal? Have you lain beside some pond, a broadening of the
creek above an ancient beaver-dam, at night, in mellowest midsummer,
and watched the muskrats at their frays and feeding? Have you hunted
the common wildcat, short-bodied demon, whose tracks upon the snow
are discernible each winter morning, but who is so crafty, so gifted with
some great art of slyness, that you may grow to manhood with him all
about you, yet never see him in the sinewy flesh unless with dog and
gun, and food and determination, you seek his trail, and follow it
unreasoningly until you terminate the stolid quest with a discovery of
the quarry lying close along the body of some eloping, stunted tree, and
with a lively episode in immediate prospect? Did you ever chase a
wolverine, last of his kind in a clearing-overflowed region, strange
combination in character and form of bear and lynx, gluttonous and
voracious, and strong and fearless, a beast descended almost unchanged
from the time of the earliest cave-men, the horror of the bravest dog,
and end his too uncivilized career with a rifle-shot at thoughtful
distance?
Have you seen the wild pigeons, before pot-hunters invaded their
southern roosts and breeding-grounds and slaughtered them by millions,
exterminating one of the most wonderful of American game birds,
sweep over in such dense clouds that the sun would be obscured, and at
times so close to earth that a long pole thrust aloft from tree or hillock
would stun such numbers as would make a gallant pot-pie? Have you
followed the deer in the dense forest, clinging doggedly to his track
upon the fresh snow from the dusk of early morning, startling him
again and again from covert, and shooting whenever you caught even
so much as a glimpse of his gray body through distant interstices of tree
and brush, until, late in the afternoon, human endurance, which always
surpasses that of the wild beast, overcame him, and he leaped less

strongly with each new alarm and grew more reckless before twilight,
and came within easy range and fed his enemies on the morrow? Have
you watched for him beside the brackish waters of the lick, where,
perched upon a rude, high scaffold built beside a tree, mosquito-bitten
and uneasy, you waited and suffered, preserving an absolute silence
and immobility until came ghost-like flitting figures from the forest to
the shallow's edge, when the great gun, carrying the superstitious
number of buckshot, just thirteen, roared out, awakening a thousand
echoes of the night, and, clambering down, found a great antlered thing
in its death agony?
Have you wandered through new clearings neglected for a season and
waded ankle-deep in strawberry blooms, and, later, fed there upon such
scarlet fruit, so fragrant and with such a flavor of its own that the
scientific horticulturist owns to-day his weakness? Have you looked
out upon the flats some bright spring morning and found them
transformed into a shallow lake by the creek's first flood, and seen one
great expanse of shining gold as the sun smote the thin ice made in the
night but to disappear long before mid-day and leave a surface all
ripples and shifting lights and shadows, upon which would come an
occasional splash and great out-extending circles, as some huge mating
pickerel leaped in his glee? Have you stood sometime, in sheer delight
of it, and drawn into distended lungs the air clarified by hundreds of
miles of sweep