Some Summer Days in Iowa | Page 9

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.
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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.
[Illustration: "THE FRAGRANCE OF THE MILKWEED AT EVENING" (p. 54)]

VIII.--BY THE RIVERSIDE IN AUGUST
When morning broke, little wisps of mist, like curls of white smoke, were drifting on the surface of the river as it journeyed through the canyon of cliffs and trees, dark as the walls of night, toward the valley where the widening sea of day was slowly changing from gray to rosy gold. Caught in a cove where the water was still these little