became so trained that bees were nearly
as easy to it as birds. I saw and heard bees wherever I went. One day,
standing on a street corner in a great city, I saw above the trucks
and the traffic a line of bees carrying off sweets from some grocery or
confectionery shop.

One looks upon the woods with a new interest when he suspects they hold
a colony of bees. What a pleasing secret it is; a tree with a heart
of comb-honey, a decayed oak or maple with a bit of Sicily or Mount
Hymettus stowed away in its trunk or branches; secret chambers where
lies hidden the wealth of ten thousand little freebooters, great nuggets
and wedges of precious ore gathered with risk and labor from every field
and wood about.

But if you would know the delights of bee-hunting, and how many sweets
such a trip yields beside honey, come with me some bright, warm, late
September or early October day. It is the golden season of the year,
and any errand or pursuit that takes us abroad upon the hills or by
the painted woods and along the amber colored streams at such a time is
enough. So, with haversacks filled with grapes and peaches and apples
and a bottle of milk,--for we shall not be home to dinner,--and armed
with a compass, a hatchet, a pail, and a box with a piece of comb-honey
neatly fitted into it--any box the size of your hand with a lid will do
nearly as well as the elaborate and ingenious contrivance of the regular
bee-hunter--we sally forth. Our course at first lies along the highway,
under great chestnut-trees whose nuts are just dropping, then through an
orchard and across a little creek, thence gently rising through a long
series of cultivated fields toward some high, uplying land, behind which
rises a rugged wooded ridge or mountain, the most sightly point in all
this section. Behind this ridge for several miles the country is wild,
wooded, and rocky, and is no doubt the home of many wild swarms of
bees. What a gleeful uproar the robins, cedar-birds, high-holes, and
cow black-birds make amid the black cherry-trees as we pass along. The
raccoons, too, have been here after black cherries, and we see their
marks at various points. Several crows are walking about a newly
sowed wheat field we pass through, and we pause to note their graceful
movements and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground with
just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no
strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a little condesce