Everyday Adventures

away. To quote rightly the words of a

orks and

to work a

of old, I suddenly decided to e

there was the thought of a little cabin hidden in the heart of the pine barrens. So I ran away through snow-covered meadows and silent woods and past farmho

valley of Rephaim. Perhaps it was the wind; but why did not the tree-tops sway instead of standing in frozen rows? The sky above was the color of the eggs of the wood thrush, a tender blue faintly washed with white. As the sun rose higher and higher, the color deepened to that bluest of blues which burns

orway is a tiny horseshoe, which was dug out of the bog at Upper Mill, undoubtedly cast by some fairy steed. One whole side of the cabin is taken up by an arched fireplace built of brown and ye

ttle-road from Perth Amboy. Every now and then Charlie finds old coins, King George III pennies and farthings, and the rare New Jersey pennies which were coined only during two years, and which bear a plough and the old name of New Jersey-Nova C?sarea. One day, when I was gossiping with Charlie, I told him that, if he took up the

along the edges of brooks and bogs. Who made them? Who keeps them open? No one knows. I have been able to follow a few of them out to the end. One leads to Ong's Hat, a little clearing in the heart of the woods, where grows an enormous white-oak tree. A century and a half ago Ong, the Indian, lived there. One day he disappeared. Nothing was ever found except his

The first friend I met was a little bird that dived like a mouse into a pile of brush. I saw a brook, and hurried to it, knowing that if the bird were a winter wren it could not possibly keep from running along the edges

he hummingbird and the short-billed marsh wren are smaller. Beyond the kinglet I heard the clicking alarm-notes and saw a flutter of the white skirts of a junco as it flew up ahead of me, showing its white tail-feathers, while in the woods a silver-and-blue bird sprang out of the bushes

k like little green hands with four and five fingers. The stem is like drawn copper wire. Beyond the fern I met the pale-gray poison sumac,

and thickets of scrub oak, and finally leads to a still brook all afloat in midsummer with pond lilies. When the path reached the bogs, which to-day were frozen solid, I tur

re the animal had given sudden bounds. It was none other than the trail of a weasel, probably the long-tailed variety, although that is rare in the barrens. Like others of his family, this animal oftens follows a man's tracks for a long distance, perha

rather than loud. "Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo, hoo!" it went, and sometimes, "Hoo-hoo-hoo!" Usually, though, the second note was doubled. It meant that the great horned owl with its speckled gray ba

l up the chimney with masses of pitch-pine knots and stumps that I had dug up in the dry bogs. All of the sapwood had decayed, leaving nothing except the resinous bones of the fallen trees. They burned at the touch of a

G-TAILE

miles away. In my cabin I keep a special shelf of the books which I have always wanted to read, and for which in some way I never find time in the hurry of everyday life. That evening I sat for long over the Saga of Burnt Njal, and read again of the bill of Gunnar and the grim axe, the "og

hen that his bow-string was cut in twain; "and ye two, my mo

lie on it?

ies on it,

garda; "for know ye now that

place a round, black hole had betrayed the secret spring that flooded the whole swale. In the coldest weather this spring-hole remains unfrozen. I dipped up a pitcherful of the soft, spic

ould be. There was no form of aquatic phosphorescent life that would swim through a northern stream in the depths of winter. It was only when I started to tell the time by the sky clock that the mystery was solved. I was looki

t, held by the glare, stood a big buck. For a moment I looked right into his beautiful, liquid, gleaming eyes. Then, with a snort, he plunged into the woods and was gone. For years I

into the circle of heat, and fell asleep to the flickering of the fire and the croon of the wind among the pine trees outside. Through th

ame up through the pine trees I met first one and then another of the bird-folk abroad after their breakfasts. First I heard the "Pip, pip!" of the downy woodpecker, all black and white, with a bloodstain at the back of his head. He is a tree-climber who can go up

trident tongue. Next came a tree sparrow, with his white wing-bar and brown-red patch on the crown of his head. He was busily scratching on the ground; he is called a tree sparrow because never by any chance is he found in a tree. On the sid

hroat-patches. Near them suddenly hopped a bird that ought to have been far south. It was reddish brown with a long tail, and I recognized the femal

mp, large birds. At first I thought that they were cedar birds, but in a moment I caught sight of their coloring. Six of the males out of the flock of seventy-four were in full plumage. Their forked tails were velvet blac

hy. Sometimes they alighted on the ground and then flew up all together, like a flock of starlings. They looked like overgrown goldfinches, just as the pine grosbeak looks like an overgrown purple finch, and the blue grosbeak of the south for all the world like a monstrous indi

a chirping chorus. When they flew, they sometimes gave a single, clear flight-note, but never made a sound when feeding on the ground. The birds had short, slightly forked tails, and the yellow ring around the eye gave them, when seen in profile, a curious spectacled appearance; while the huge

hed seemed always to be the pits of the wild black cherry (Prunus serotina). They would take the pits well out of sight back into their beaks, keeping their bills half open in a comical manner, as if they had a bone in the throat. A se

sure was in immature plumage. The back was yellowish instead of being gray, like the females', and the wings were of a dirty white color instead of being mottled black

and Latin, the myth is perpetuated that the evening grosbeak, or Hesperiphona vespertina, sings only at twilight. It all began in 1823, when one Major Delafield, a boundary agent of the United States government, was camping northwest of La

ns silent for a minute before trying again. It sounds like the early part of a robin's song, but is always suddenly checked as if the performer were out of breath. The guess of the imaginative major was later elaborated by Prince Lucien Bonaparte, Nuttall, and

se of day. Clothed in striking color contrast of black, white and gold, he seems to represent the allegory of diurnal transmutation, for his sable pinions close aro

knew was that for me the twenty-ninth day of January, 1917, would be marked in my calendar forever by

clouds drifting across its face, and I traveled back to town in the full glory of a clear winter morning, filled with the measureless co