ld. Whenever
you speak of it, you say the right thing, you find the right word, you
get the right meaning. With nature alone you are perfectly natural.
Towards society you show your shabby, awkward, trivial, uncomfortable
side. But these drawings, these notes--there lies your power, your
gift, your home. You truly belong to the woodsmen."

Never used to study myself, I listened, to this as to fresh talk about
a stranger.

"Do you not foresee what will happen?" she went on, with emotion.
"After we have been married a while you will begin to wander off--at
first for part of a day, then for a day, then for a day and a night,
then for days and nights together. That was the way with Audubon, that
was the way with Wilson, that is the way with Thoreau, that will be the
way with all whom nature draws as it draws you. And, me--think of
me--at home! A woman not able to go with you! Not able to wade the
creeks and swim the rivers! Not able to sleep out in the brown leaves,
to endure the rain, the cold, the travel! And, so I shall never be
able to fill your life with mine as you fill mine with yours. As time
passes, I shall fill it less and less. Every spring nature will be
just as young to you; I shall be always older. The water you love
ripples, never wrinkles. I shall cease rippling and begin wrinkling.
No matter what happens, each summer the birds get fresh feathers; only
think how my old ones will never drop out. I shall want you to go on
with your work. If I am to be your wife, I must be wings to you. But
think of compelling me to furnish you the wings with which to leave me!
What is a little book on Kentucky birds in comparison with my
happiness!"

She was so deeply moved that my one desire was to uproot her fears on
the spot.

"Then there shall be no little book on Kentucky birds!" I cried. "I'll
throw these things into the fire as soon as I go home. Only say what
you wish me to be, Georgiana," I continued, laughing, "and I'll be
it--if it's the town pump."

"Then if I could only be the town well," she said, with a poor little
effort to make a heavy heart all at once go merrily again.

Bent on making it go merrily as long as I shall live, the following day
I called out to her at the window:

"Georgiana, I'm improving. I'm getting along."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, in town this morning they chose me as one of the judges of
vegetables at the fair next month. I said, 'Gentlemen, I