But the great point gained in the day’s outing was to find that even the carrion-flower could be put to such good use. It makes a capital observatory, wherein and wherefrom to study the life of the open meadows. To these Nature-built shelters you are always welcome; the latch-string is always hanging out, and if perchance you do not share its single room with many a creature that loves the shade at noontide, and, so while away many an hour in choicest company, you may lie at its open door and watch the strange procession that forever passes by. It may be a mink, a mouse, or a musk-rat may hurry by, bound on some errand that piques your curiosity. A lazy turtle may waddle to your den and gaze in blank astonishment at you; and, better than all else, the pretty garter snakes will come and go, salute you with a graceful darting of their forked tongues and then pass on, perhaps to tell their neighbor what strange sights they have seen. And as the day draws to a close, what myriad songs rise from every blade of grass! Hosts of unseen musicians pipe to the passing breeze; and crickets everywhere chirp so shrilly that the house about me trembles. The day is done; but the night brings no end of novelty. The moping herons are no longer stupid; the blinking owls are all activity. Afar off the whip-poor-will calls—who knows why?—and the marsh-owl protests, as well it may, at such unseemly clatter. How quickly into a new world has the familiar meadow grown! Through the half-naked beam and rafters of my leafy tent I watch the night-prowling birds go hurrying by, and follow their shadows as the weird bats flit before me, for the moon has risen, and in its pallid light every familiar tree and shrub and all the night-loving wild-life of the meadows is wrapped in uncanny garbs. It is fitting now that a filmy mist should rise as a curtain and shut out the view. “He is none of us,” seems to shout every creature in my ear, and, taking the hint, I pick my way homeward through the dripping grass. A Wayside Brook.