And it is not so in my home, which is neither a real farm nor yet a city home. For here are some small boys who live very much as I did when I was a boy. No, they are not farmer’s boys; for I am not a farmer, but only a “commuter”--if you know what that is. I go into a great city for my work; and when the day’s work is done, I turn homeward here to Mullein Hill--far out in the country. And when the dark November nights come, I hang the lantern high in the stable, as my father used to do, while four shining faces gather round, as four small boys seat themselves on upturned buckets behind the cow. The lantern flickers, the milk foams, the stories flow--“Bucksy” stories of the noble red-man; and stories of the heroes of old; and marvelous stories of that greatest hero of all--their father, far away yonder when he was a boy, when there were so many interesting things to do on Grandfather’s farm just before Thanksgiving Day. CHAPTER VII A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO DO THIS FALL I You ought to go out into the fields and woods as many as six times this fall, even though you have to take a long street-car ride to get out of the city. Let me give you just six bits of sound advice about going afield:-- First, go often to the same place, so that you can travel over and over the same ground and become very familiar with it. The first trip you will not see much but woods and fields. But after that, each succeeding walk will show you _particular_ things--this dead tree with the flicker’s hole, that old rail-pile with its rabbit-hole--until, by and by, you will know every turn and dip, every pile of stones, every hole and nest; and you will find a thousand things that on the first trip you didn’t dream were there. Secondly, when you go into the woods, go _expecting_ to see something in particular--always looking for some particular nest, bird, beast, or plant. You may not find that particular thing, but your eyes will be sharpened by your expectation and purpose, and you will be pretty sure therefore to see something. At worst you will come back with a disappointment, and that is better than coming back without a thing! Thirdly, go off when you can alone. Don’t be selfish, unsociable, offish--by no means that. But you must learn to use your own eyes and ears, think your own thoughts, make your own discoveries, and follow the hints and hopes that you alone can have. Go with the school class for a picnic, but for woodcraft go alone. Fourthly, learn first of all in the woods to be as silent as an Indian and as patient as a granite rock. Practice standing still when the mosquitoes sing, and fixing your mind on the hole under the stump instead of the hole the mosquito is boring between your eyes.