er oppose crazy persons. Well, Mux
helped himself to oyster number three. There was no water, no tub. But
what were oysters for if not to be washed? And who was he but _Procyon
lotor_--_Procyon_ "the washer"? Can the leopard change his spots or the
racoon his habits? Can he? Shall he? I could almost hear him muttering
under his breath, "To be, or not to be: that is the question." Then he
darted a triumphantly malicious glance at me, retreated to the back of his
cage, thrust his oyster out of sight beneath the straw of his bed, and
washed it--washed the oyster in the straw, washed it into a fistful of
sticks and chaff, and gloated as he swallowed it.

RACOON CREEK

[Illustration]

RACOON CREEK

Into the wode to her the briddes sing.

I

Over the creek, and clearing it by a little, hung a snow-white, stirless
mist, its under surface even and parallel with the face of the water, its
upper surface peaked and billowed half-way to the tops of the
shore-skirting trees.

As I dipped along, my head was enveloped in the cloud; but bending over
the skiff, I could see far up the stream between a mist-ceiling and a
water-floor, as through a long, low room. How deep and dark seemed the
water! And the trees how remote, aerial, and floating! as if growing in
the skies, with no roots' fast hold of the earth. Filling the valley,
conforming to every bend and stretch of the creek, lay the breath of the
water, motionless and sheeted, a spirit stream, hovering over the sluggish
current a moment, before it should float upward and melt away. It was
cold, too, as a wraith might be, colder than the water, for the June sun
had not yet risen over the swamp.

At the bridge where the road crossed was a dam which backed the creek out
into an acre or more of pond. Not a particle of mud discolored the water;
but it was dark, and as it came tumbling, foaming over the moss-edged
gates it lighted up a rich amber color, the color of strong tea. In the
half chill of the dawn the old bridge lay veiled in smoking spray, in a
thin, rising vapor of spicy odors, clean, medicinal odors, as of the
brewing of many roots, the fragrance of shores of sedges, ferns, and
aromatic herbs steeped in the slow, soft tide. And faint across the creek,
the road, and the fields lay the pondy smell of spatter-docks.

I pushed out from the sandy cove and lay with a reach of the lusty docks
between me and either shore. It was early morning. The yellow,