always understand him: he is the poet among them, and a poet is always
suspected of knowing a little more than any one else.

Sometime I may try to tell you something of what he says; but here ends
the talk of the trees that stood in the village street.




HOW THE INDIAN CORN GROWS


The children came in from the field with their hands full of the soft,
pale-green corn-silk. Annie had rolled hers into a bird's-nest; while
Willie had dressed his little sister's hair with the long, damp tresses,
until she seemed more like a mermaid, with pale blue eyes shining out
between the locks of her sea-green hair, than like our own Alice.

They brought their treasures to the mother, who sat on the door-step of
the farm-house, under the tall, old elm-tree that had been growing there
ever since her mother was a child. She praised the beauty of the bird's-
nest, and kissed the little mermaiden to find if her lips tasted of salt
water; but then she said, "Don't break any more of the silk, dear
children, else we shall have no ears of corn in the field,--none to
roast before our picnic fires, and none to dry and pop at Christmas-time
next winter."

Now, the children wondered at what their mother said, and begged that
she would tell them how the silk could make the round, full kernels of
corn. And this is the story that the mother told, while they all sat on