As a child soon tires of one toy, so I longed, after an hour’s play, for a new field and other forms of life, and so much for serious study as that I might vary my amusement; but let not this apparent aimlessness be held unworthy of the rambler. Call it play, if you choose, but the incidents of such a day come back in bold relief when, with or without an effort, they are recalled. I have found it most fortunate that unconscious cerebation is so active when I wander about, toying, as here by the forest brook, with many forms of life. More than half the acts of every creature I meet are apparently meaningless at the moment of their occurrence, but their full significance is evident when in thought I wander a second time over the same ground. Scarcely regarded incidents come well to the fore and throw a flood of light upon what lacked at the time any evidence, on the creature’s part, of complicated thought. Herein, I think, lies the secret of so much disappointment when some people—and they are many—wander in the fields. Filled with enthusiastic desire upon laying down the teeming pages of Thoreau and Burroughs, they expect to see with another’s eyes and appreciate with another’s brain. They see a bird, a mammal, or a host of butterflies, and then ask themselves upon the spot, Well! what of them? The bare fact of their presence is all that the minds of inexperienced ramblers encompass. The wild life they have met excites a passing thrill and they give no further heed to it. And it never occurs to many to recall the incidents. Being a bit disappointed then, why give heed to the subject later? On the contrary, if at the close of the day, in the hills and hollows of the blazing wood upon the andirons, if the walk was in winter, we picture the scenes of the recent ramble, these same birds or mammals, or whatsoever else we saw, will be seen again in a new light. Why those birds and not others were where we found them; why the field-mice or rabbits or a weasel were where we saw them or it, will become evident. The various features of every visited spot will be remembered; and the cheery blaze upon the hearth tells us, as it were, the story that could not be read when facing Nature’s open page. Some of us inveterate ramblers read more than others, when in the fields, but no one can afford to trust to this alone. To extract the whole truth, the past must be recalled again and again.