I walk to Bolivar, looking at the wild trees and the spruces. The earth-even the November earth -is beautiful. The frosty air brings a new freshness to my life. I forget that I am old. Let me record that at fifty-six my soul has never been so strongly moved by nature as to-day. Is it possible that the end of life is to be more precious than the beginning? If the world would leave me alone! I sit before my fire and read, and-shall I say it?— meditate, if that curious state of consciousness may be called meditation-to sit and idly let the torrent of thoughts fall, like a brook, through the brain. From the past everything is summoned-the dark and light-oh, the joy!-alas! the sorrow. Old faces come again; the dead, in blessed mercy, show me their dear faces sublimated. No trace of earth or sorrow, only the tender grace stays with me. Beloved visions! Why should I ask for the grosser earthly shapes?

We play whist in the evening, and now the wind in noisy gusts shakes the windows and with a hushing sound murmurs in the trees. I have a letter from Pollock. We are to dine with General Caldwell on Thanksgiving; there is doubt if enough will come to drink the double magnum.

Will writes me to know if I can go to Rome and Egypt with them. It is like being asked to heaven.

I can only say no. But what shall I say of that most dear friend who thus remembers me? Rome! To see it once again, and dip my hands in the fountain of Trevi! It may not be.

NOVEMBER 27. Sunshine and warmth of May. I go again to Kranzberg, my wild hill. The inarticulate trees must know me now for a friend. I long for this old farm as a collector does for a picture. I transplant things in my garden. In the evening John and Joseph come. The shriveled little tailor is making trouble-an irksome insect. It grows cold apace, and the shipwrecking wind howls over the chimney. A light is burning still in the wurst-macherei, where pig is being transmuted into sausage.

The rail-splitters complain of the heat.

"She ventures upon dangerous skirmishes, from which she comes out, her vanity in triumph, her delicacy in rags."-TAINE.

NOVEMBER 28. Clear, but very cold. I walk to Kranzberg and through the north woods. Once in the shelter of the trees, summer comes again; it is even hot. How clear the air!-all the distances as through a telescope. The boys, splitting rails at eighty cents per hundred, are as cheery and radiantly strong as prize-fighters. They tell us the

can for dinner is well filled-that good digestion waits on appetite.

John, Joseph, Ludwig, and I play whist and drink "W. & W." A charming evening. We go home at ten o'clock, the thermometer 15°, and every star a comet in brightness.

DECEMBER 2. The record of a small meeting of the Arimathæan Shooting and Fishing Club.

It being the season when roast pig is most highly esteemed, the members resident of the club carefully selected one aged six weeks and five days. This, according to Kin, who is deeply skilled in such matters, is the limit of age. If beyond that, they become hog; if less than that, they are too young to remove from the maternal fount. Long experience, then, has decided Kin to draw this line, which we gladly do not cross.

The pig is sacrificed by Jacobus, placed in a kneeling position, which suits for the spit, and put away to mellow and ripen for Saturday, when he is to go before the fire.

The resident secretary, Sebastian Banbaker, is charged with the double burden of scribe and cook, to which is added a general charge of the crypts wherein the club have laid their store of wines and other cheering fluids. It is hard to say, when both

offices are so well filled, wherein Herr Banbaker is more efficient; but it has been solemnly affirmed, after the second punch following a young goose roasted before the Hermitage fire, that while there have been more celebrated cooks, there never was one who, in the preparation of goose, could hold a candle to Banbaker.

The most admirable aim of all true fishermen and hunters, as held by Banbaker, is not to waste too much time in the chase, but in the enjoyment of the creature comforts resulting therefrom. In this sentiment he is sustained by many traditions of the great chief White Eyes, who was the first sachem of the Arimathæa Club. This sapient savage, who early found solace in the fire-water of the pale-face (so tradition goes), would, between drinks, with the gravity of his race declare that when a fat buck was killed, nothing became a hunter so well as to feast from the steaming, savory pot and drink deep from the capacious calabash, nor pause from aboriginal skin-stuffing while a collop of venison or drop of rum remained. Stretched upon a couch of furs, the air blue with tobacco, his large assortment of favorite wives removed the remains of the feast, and the assembled braves, each in turn, after the manner of modern hunters, told his favorite lie about slaying deer, and of valorous

encounters with savage white-faced bears. No effeminate jargon of choke-bore guns or eight-ounce rods weakened the statements of these hunters, who were in it for results only.

Let all true Arimathæans mark how the forefathers of the present club upheld the true practices of the chase. First, with all craft and diligence to catch their hare. Having him, all care vanished, to comfortably eat him. How, it may be asked, was it possible for these aboriginal members of the club, with smooth stones from the brook, like David of old, to slay more game in a day than all the choke-bores in a month? It may be that our degenerate hunters weaken themselves so much in "making up" that small energy is left for pursuit. Alack! to see some of the curled darlings, with boots from Piccadilly and stockings from Dumfries; gay shooting-coats from Poole's and a man to carry the bag-and banish game. They bring nothing home but a fierce thirst and ravenous hunger.

Warned by this decadence, nor hoping to reform an abuse so well rooted, the Arimathæans have long since resolved to welcome as their sole reward this unquenchable thirst, this voracious hunger. Why beat the bush in vain, since modern civilization makes it easy to procure food, while thirst and hunger have become like gifts of God?