h, and this was my first clear view of it. Thus it appears
that birds stuck to me, impressed me from the first. Very early in my
life the coming of the bluebird, the phoebe, the song sparrow, and the
robin, in the spring, were events that stirred my emotions, and gave a
new color to the day. When I had found a bluebird's nest in the cavity
of a stump or a tree, I used to try to capture the mother bird by
approaching silently and clapping my hand over the hole; in this I
sometimes succeeded, though, of course, I never harmed the bird. I used
to capture song sparrows in a similar way, by clapping my hat over the
nest in the side of the bank along the road.

I can see that I was early drawn to other forms of wild life, for I
distinctly remember when a small urchin prying into the private affairs
of the "peepers" in the marshes in early spring, sitting still a long
time on a log in their midst, trying to spy out and catch them in the
act of peeping. And this I succeeded in doing, discovering one piping
from the top of a bulrush, to which he clung like a sailor to a mast; I
finally allayed the fears of one I had captured till he sat in the palm
of my hand and piped--a feat I have never been able to repeat since.

I studied the ways of the bumblebees also, and had names of my own
for all the different kinds. One summer I made it a point to collect
bumblebee honey, and I must have gathered a couple of pounds. I found it
very palatable, though the combs were often infested with parasites. The
small red-banded bumblebees that lived in large colonies in holes in
the ground afforded me the largest yields. A large bee, with a broad
light-yellow band, was the ugliest customer to deal with. It was a
fighter and would stick to its enemy like grim death, following me
across the meadow and often getting in my hair, and a few times up my
trousers leg, where I had it at as great a disadvantage as it had me.
It could stab, and I could pinch, and one blow followed the other pretty
rapidly.

As a child I was always looked upon and spoken of as an "odd one" in the
family, even by my parents. Strangers, and relatives from a distance,
visiting at the house, would say, after looking us all over, "That is
not your boy," referring to me, "who is he?" And I am sure I used to
look the embarrassment I felt at not being as the others were. I did not
want to be set apart from them or regarded as an outsider. As this was
before the days of photograp