had gone wrong, indoors and out; and he was compelled to give it
up. So he brought his forty or more skips of bees to West Park
and lived with me, devoting himself, not very successfully, to
bee-culture. He loved to "fuss" with bees. I think the money he
got for his honey looked a little more precious to him than other
money, just as the silver quarters I used to get when a boy for the
maple sugar I made had a charm and a value no quarters have ever
had in my eyes since.

That thing in Hiram that was so appealed to by his bee-culture, and
by any fancy strain of sheep or poultry, is strong in me, too, and
has played an important part in my life. If I had not taken it out
in running after wild nature and writing about it I should probably
have been a bee-man, or a fancy-stock farmer. As it is, I have
always been a bee-lover, and have usually kept several swarms.
Ordinary farming is prosy and tiresome compared with bee-farming.
Combined with poultry-raising, it always had special attractions
for me. When I was a farm boy of twelve or thirteen years, one
of our neighbors had a breed of chickens with large topknots that
filled my eye completely. My brother and I used to hang around the
Chase henyard for hours, admiring and longing for those chickens.
The impression those fowls made upon me seems as vivid to-day as it
was when first made. The topknot was the extra touch--the touch of
poetry that I have always looked for in things, and that Hiram, in
his way, craved and sought for, too.

There was something, too, in my maternal grandfather that probably
foreshadowed the nature-lover and nature-writer. In him it took
the form of a love of angling, and a love for the Bible. He went
from the Book to the stream, and from the stream to the Book,