In the afternoon I took the Landaff Valley round, down the village street nearly to the junction of Gale River and Ham Branch, then up the Ham Branch (or Landaff) Valley to a crossroad on the left, and so back to the road from the Profile Notch, and by that home again. The jaunt, which is one of our Franconia favorites, is peculiar for being substantially level; with no more uphill and downhill than would be included in a walk of the same distance--perhaps six miles--almost anywhere in southern New England. The first thing a man is likely to notice as he passes the last of the village houses, and finds himself skirting the bank of Ham Branch (which looks to be nearly or quite as full as the river into which it empties itself), is the color of the water. Gale River is fresh from the hills, and ripples over its stony bed as clear as crystal. The branch, on the contrary, has been flowing for some time through a flat meadowy valley, where it has taken on a rich earthy hue, to which it might be natural to apply a less honorable sounding word, perhaps, if it were a question of some neutral stream, in whose character and reputation I felt no personal, friendly interest. Just as I came to it, that afternoon, I saw to my surprise a white admiral butterfly sunning itself upon an alder leaf. I hope the reader knows the species,--_Limenitis Arthemis_, sometimes called the banded purple,--one of the prettiest and showiest of New England insects, four black or blackish wings crossed by a broad white band. It was much out of season now, I felt sure, both from what my entomological friends had told me, and from my own recollections of previous years, and I was seized with a foolish desire to capture it as a sort of trophy. It lay just beyond my reach, and I disturbed it, in hopes it would settle nearer the ground. Twice it disappointed me. Then I threw a stick toward it, aiming not wisely but too well, and this time startled it so badly that it rose straight into the air, sailed across the stream, and came to rest far up in a tall elm. “You were never cut out for a collector of insects,” I said to myself, recalling my experience of the forenoon; but I was glad to have seen the creature,--the first one for several years,--and went on my way as happy as a child in thinking of it. In the second half of a man’s century he may be thankful for almost anything that, for the time being, lifts twoscore of years off his back. The best part of most of us, I think, is the boy that was born with us. So far I am a Wordsworthian;-- “And I could wish _my_ days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.”