of the trees that were
reaching out across the pond. Evening was close at hand. Would the
veery sing again? Or was it the faint, sweet music of the bells of
Lincoln, Acton, and Concord that I heard, humming in the pine needles
outside the window, as if they were the strings of a harp?

The chanting voice died away and--the room was still; but I seem to
hear that voice every time I open the pages of "The Week" or "Walden."
And the other day, as I stood on the shores of the pond, adding my
stone to the cairn where the cabin used to stand, a woodthrush off in
the trees (trees that have grown great since Thoreau last looked upon
them), began to chant--or was it the Pilgrim from Dubuque?--

"Truth was the beacon ray that lured him on.
It lit his path on plain and mountain height,
In wooded glade and on the flow'ry lawn--
Where'er he strayed, it was his guiding light."

[Illustration: The Honey Flow]

IX

THE HONEY FLOW

And this our life, exempt from public haunt and those swift currents
that carry the city-dweller resistlessly into the movie show, leaves us
caught in the quiet eddy of little unimportant things,--digging among
the rutabagas, playing the hose at night, casting the broody hens into
the "dungeon," or watching the bees.

Many hours of my short life I have spent watching the bees,--blissful,
idle hours, saved from the wreck of time, hours fragrant of white
clover and buckwheat and filled with the honey of nothing-to-do; every
minute of them capped, like the comb within the hive, against the
coming winter of my discontent. If, for the good of mankind, I could
write a new Commandment to the Decalogue, it would read: Thou shalt
keep a hive of bees.

Let one begin early, and there is more health in a hive of bees than in
a hospital; more honey, too, more recreation and joy for the
philosophic mind, though no one will deny that very many persons
prepare themselves both in body and mind for the comforting rest and
change of the hospital with an almost solemn joy.

But personally I prefer a hive of bees. They are a sure cure, it is
said, for rheumatism, the patient making bare the afflicted part, then
with it stirring up the bees. But it is saner and happier to get the
bees before you get the rheumatism and prevent its coming. No one can
keep bees without being impressed with the wisdom of the ounce of
prevention.

I cannot think of a better habit to contract than keeping bees. What