long after that the
man failed and no rifle came, and the money was not returned. Then Hiram
concluded to make a journey out there. I was at home at the time, and
can see him yet as he started off along the road that June day, off for
Utica on foot. Again he marched up the hill, and then marched down, and
no rifle or money ever came.

For years he had the Western fever, and kept his valise under his bed
packed ready for the trip. Once he actually started and got as far as
White Pigeon, Michigan. There his courage gave out, and he came back.
Still he kept his valise packed, but the end of his life's journey came
before he was ready to go West again.

Hiram, as you know, came to live with me at Slabsides during the last
years of his life. He had made a failure of it on the old farm, after
I had helped him purchase it; nearly everything had gone wrong, indoors
and out; and he was compelled to give it up. So he brought his forty or
more skips of bees to West Park and lived with me, devoting himself, not
very successfully, to bee-culture. He loved to "fuss" with bees. I think
the money he got for his honey looked a little more precious to him than
other money, just as the silver quarters I used to get when a boy for
the maple sugar I made had a charm and a value no quarters have ever had
in my eyes since.

That thing in Hiram that was so appealed to by his bee-culture, and
by any fancy strain of sheep or poultry, is strong in me, too, and
has played an important part in my life. If I had not taken it out in
running after wild nature and writing about it I should probably have
been a bee-man, or a fancy-stock farmer. As it is, I have always been
a bee-lover, and have usually kept several swarms. Ordinary farming
is prosy and tiresome compared with bee-farming. Combined with
poultry-raising, it always had special attractions for me. When I was a
farm boy of twelve or thirteen years, one of our neighbors had a breed
of chickens with large topknots that filled my eye completely. My
brother and I used to hang around the Chase henyard for hours, admiring
and longing for those chickens. The impression those fowls made upon
me seems as vivid to-day as it was when first made. The topknot was
the extra touch--the touch of poetry that I have always looked for in
things, and that Hiram, in his way, craved and sought for, too.

There was something, too, in my maternal grandfather that probably
foreshadowed the nature-lover and natur