Have you ever seen a buckwheat field in bloom? Have you stood at its
margin and gazed over those acres of soft eider-down? Have your
nostrils inhaled the perfume of it all, the heavy sweetness toned
keenly with the whiff of pine from the adjacent wood? Have 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