s
whistled and shrieked, are now sending forth leaves of tender green and
the voice of the wind caressing them is softened to a tone as musical
as the song of birds. Flowers are springing up, not in the rigid rows
or precise squares of a mechanically inclined horticulturist, but
surprising one by elbowing themselves out of the narrowest crevices, or
peeping bashfully out from behind fallen trees, or clinging almost
upside down to the side of an overhanging cliff.

"My camp on Rainy Lake faces the south and in front is a little stunted
black ash tree, so dwarfed, gnarled, twisted, and homely that it is
almost pretty. I refrained from cutting it down because of its
attractive deformity. In the springtime, a few years ago, a pair of
robins chose it as their nesting place. One bright Sunday morning, as
the nest was in course of construction, I was sitting in my doorway
watching the pair. The brisk little husband was hurrying toward the
nest with a bit of moss; but the mild sun, the crisp air, the sweet
breathing earth, the gently whispering trees seemed to make him so very
happy he could not but tell of it. Alighting on a twig he dropped the
moss, opened his beak, and poured forth in song the joy his little body
could no longer contain. That is the joy of a northern No-Man's Land
in the month of May.

"We are so happy in our woodland home that we wish everyone might share
it with us. But perhaps some would not enjoy what we enjoy, or see
what we see, and some are prevented from coming by the duties of other
callings, and each must follow the pathway his feet are most fitted to
tread. For myself, I only want my little log cabin with the wild vines
climbing over its walls and clinging to the mud-chinked crevices, where
I can hear the song of wild birds mingled with the sleepy hum of bees
moving from blossom to blossom about the doorway; where I can see the
timid red deer, as, peeping out of the brush, it hesitates between the
fear of man and the temptation of the white clover growing in front of
my home, and where I can watch the endless procession of waves
following each other up the bay. Give me the necessity of working for
my daily bread so that I will not feel as though I were a useless
cumbrance upon the earth; allow me an opportunity now and then of doing
a kindly act, even if it be no more than restoring to the shelter of
its mother's breast a fledgling that has fallen from its nest in a tree
top. If I may