y of cabbages and
potatoes, blessed is untidiness to the lover of Nature. So long as I
study birds I shall carefully seek out the farmer who has lost his
energy, and allows Nature her own inimitable way in his fields and
lanes. The fascinations of that neglected corner cannot be put into
words. The whole railroad embankment which bordered it on one side,
stretching far above my head, was a mad and joyous tangle of wild-grape
vines. In the shade of a cluster of slender trees was a spot enriched by
springs, where flourished the greenest of ferns, sprinkled with
Jack-in-the-pulpits and forget-me-nots. This was the delight of my
heart, and my consolation for the trials connected with chat affairs.

Alas that the usual fate of Nature's divine work should overtake it;
that into a "shiftless" head should come the thought that railroad ties
and fallen trees make good firewood, and without too much trouble can be
dragged out by horses! As a preliminary calamity, half-starved cows were
turned in to nibble the grass, and incidentally to trample and crush
flowers and ferns into one ghastly ruin. And at the same moment, as if
inspired by the same spirit of destruction, some idle railroad "hand,"
with a scythe, laid low the whole bank of grapevines. Ruthless was the
ruin, and wrecked beyond repair the spot, after man's desolating hand
passed over it; a scene of violence, of dead and dying scattered over
the trampled and torn-up sod; "murder most foul" in the eyes of a
Nature-lover. I could not bear to look upon it. I shunned it, lest I
should hate my fellow-man, who can, unnecessarily and in pure
wantonness, destroy in one hour what he cannot replace in a lifetime.

[Sidenote: _A TRAGEDY IN THE LANE._]

Nor was that the full measure of sufferings inflicted on the lane--and
me. That beautiful green passageway happened to be a short cut from the
meadow, and horse-rake and hay-wagon made the ravage complete. The one
crushed and dragged out every sweet-growing thing spared by the previous
devastators, and the other defiled with wisps of dead grass every branch
that reached over its grateful shade. It was pitiful, as much for the
exhibition thus made of a man's insensible and sordid existence, as for
the laceration of my feelings and the actual ruin wrought.

A pleasanter theme is the love-making in which I chanced to catch the
beautiful but bewildering pair in the blackberry bushes. Madam, hopping
about an old apple-tree, was apparent