hat murderous
idiocy which sets so many citizen sovereigns of America to slaughtering
the grand sovereigns of the plant world.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--The Forest Monarch's Fall. The Brownie's Grief
and Anger Thereat.]

However, all this perhaps has little to do with our great Elm, except,
that one must be grateful that it has been spared to cause the eyes to
rejoice in its beauty and to refresh us with its shade. We built a
rustic seat, against its trunk, and there in the warm summer days and
evenings which succeeded the winter of our coming to the Old Farm, I was
wont to sit and meditate, and sometimes doze. It was a favorite spot
with me, but others of the family often shared it with me, or enjoyed it
by themselves. This will well enough introduce a matter which I have now
to lay before the reader. It came to me from the Schoolmistress, who, I
venture to hope, is not forgotten by the readers of "The Tenants of An
Old Farm."

My dear Mr. Mayfield:

The package that I herewith send you has a strange history which
I beg to recite ere you break the wrappings and examine the
contents of the parcel.

It happened during one of the warm days of last June that I sat
on the rustic bench under the Great Elm and read Mr. Lowell's
"Vision of Sir Launfal." I closed the book and thought, with an
exquisite sense of its beauty and fitness, upon the poet's
opening verses which contain a description of June, and in which
are these lines:

"'Tis Heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking;
There is no price set on the lavish Summer,
And June may be had by the poorest comer."

As I conned the words my eyes slowly wandered along the
landscape, and my heart rejoiced in the royal bounty of beauty
which the poet sings. Then my vision returned to the objects just
around me, and gradually became fixed upon some of the living
things about which you have kindly told us so much new and
interesting. Indeed, they seemed already like old friends, and I
watched with keen zest their various movements.

How bright everything was, and how peaceful the tone of Nature!
Butterflies flitted by, beating the air in their leisurely way,
then rested on leaf or flower while they opened and closed their
wings with graceful, fanlike movements. The winged Hymenoptera
dashed by with the sharp, quick wingstroke of their kind, or