Well, all that happened years ago. Those old days can never come back. Even the old pasture I cannot see as I saw it then. It was only the other day, drawn by old thoughts revived, that I walked out to see it, through the still summer afternoon, down the old familiar road, so well known but so strangely quiet now, with its few scattered old white oaks and maples, that seem to nod sleepily in a kind of old friendliness, till you come to the turn by the burr oak grove where the pasture opens. There they lay,--the long, tranquil slope, the green level that had been one field, the ditch along the fence,--under the quiet sunshine, in sleep and silence. Great, peaceful-looking white clouds, like great white cattle asleep, lay along the blue heaven overhead. The old oak where we were used to choose up stood motionless, as if it dreamed over the old days. Could this be indeed the old pasture, scene of our stormy uproar, this field asleep? I turned away with a half lonely feeling. The old boys are gone, too, most of them, scattered I don't know where. Do they ever, I wonder, after the day's work is done, sit in the evening by the warm firelight, while the soft pipe-smoke wraps them in its tranquil cloud, and dream foolishly, as I do, over those old days? I like to think they do. GEORGE BYRON MERRICK The editors of this volume have been struck many times with the element of grouping that seems to have asserted itself in Wisconsin literary efforts, as in those of America, or England, or perhaps any country. Centers seem to be formed from which radiate light and glow of literary activities. Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the great literary center of our country in the middle fifty years of the nineteenth century. The Lake Region was such a center for English production in the preceding fifty years. In Wisconsin, naturally enough, the University has been the fountain from which has flowed much that is most worth-while in the literature of our state. It should be noted that not only those who are formally grouped here with the University as their center may justly be thought to be vitally indebted to that institution for the impulse to write. Among the authors first mentioned in this book, John Muir, Zona Gale, Mrs. Willsie, and Professor Sanford all were students at the University, and no doubt were profoundly influenced by their Alma Mater.