That is a peculiar season when about the middle of August the farmers are getting their meadow-hay. If you sail up the river, you will see them in all meadows, raking hay and loading it on to carts, great towering [?] teams, under which the oxen stand like beetles, chewing the cud, waiting for men to put the meadow on. With the heaviest load they dash aside to crop some more savory grass,—the half-broken steers. * * * * * There was reason enough for the first settler’s selecting the elm out of all the trees of the forest with which to ornament his villages. It is beautiful alike by sunlight and moonlight, and the most beautiful specimens are not the largest. I have seen some only twenty-five or thirty years old, more graceful and healthy, I think, than any others. It is almost become a villageous tree,—like martins and bluebirds. The high blueberry has the wildest flavor of any of the huckleberry tribe. It is a little mithridatic. It is like eating a poisonous berry which your nature makes harmless. I derive the same pleasure as if I were eating dog-berries, nightshade, and wild parsnip with impunity. Man and his affairs,—Church and State and school, trade and commerce and agriculture,—Politics,—for that is the word for them all here to-day,—I am pleased to see how little space it occupies in the landscape. It is but a narrow field. That still narrower highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveller[48] [Two pages missing.] And once again, When I went a-maying, And once or twice more I had seen thee before, For there grow the mayflower (_Epigæa repens_) And the mountain cranberry And the screech owl _strepens_. O whither dost thou go? Which way dost thou flow? Thou art the way. Thou art a road Which Dante never trode. Not many they be Who enter therein, Only the guests of the Irishman Quin.[49] There was a cross-eyed fellow used to help me survey,—he was my stake-driver,—and all he said was, at every stake he drove, “There, I shouldn’t like to undertake to pull _that_ up with my teeth.” It sticks in my _crop_. That’s a good phrase. Many things stick there. The man of wild habits, Partridges and rabbits, Who has no cares Only to set snares, Who liv’st all alone, Close to the bone, And where life is sweetest Constantly eatest. Where they once dug for money, But never found “ony.” To market fares With early apples and pears. When the spring stirs my blood With the instinct to travel, I can get enough gravel On the Old Marlborough Road. If you’ll leave your abode With your fancy unfurled, You may go round the world By the Old Marlborough Road.