"In the daytime, when not fishing or bee hunting, he would work in the fields with father and brother Barnes. There was excellent trout fishing, I remember, in the brooks; and that, with bee hunting and watching the forest fires, was his only amusement; for shooting was a pastime in which he never indulged."
"I thought," said Marguerite, "that boys in the country were always fond of shooting."
"As a rule they are," replied mamma; "but your uncle was not. His delicate, sensitive nature was always shocked by the sharp report of a gun. I remember that when we were in Vermont he and brother Barnes would go out together to hunt squirrels, Barnes carrying the gun; and that when the game was found, brother Horace would cover his ears with his hands, to soften the noise of the discharge.
"I suppose, my dears, that you do not know how hunters find wild honey?"
We knew little of wild honey save that John the Baptist used to eat it, so mamma continued:
"The bees, having no hives provided for them, made their honey in the hollow trunks of trees; and as it was one of the luxuries of our table, it was quite important to trace out their hiding-places. Brother Barnes would go out with a little box of syrup or honey, and when he found a bee upon a flower would imprison it in the box, detaining it there until it had had time to load itself with sweetness. When it was released, it would make a 'bee line' for its home in the tree; never pausing by the way, even for the sweetest flowers. Barnes would note the direction it had taken, and follow it as well as he could; but often he would be obliged to capture several bees, and sometimes pass days in the pursuit, before he would be rewarded by hearing in some tree a buzzing that could almost be called roaring. The next step was to fell the tree, which would cause the bees to quickly disperse; not, however, without stinging the intruder; but the result compensated for a sting or two, for it was not unusual for Barnes to find from twenty to thirty pounds in a tree, often, however, so mixed with the soft wood that we were obliged to strain it before it was fit to put upon the table."
"You spoke of the forest fires, mamma," said Marguerite; "pray, what were they? The woods were never literally on fire, I suppose."
"Oh yes," replied mamma, "and the fire often lasted a long time. One means of clearing the ground to make a farm was to fell the trees, while in full leafage, in what were called 'winrows.' They lay in great piles for a year and sometimes longer; then when quite dry they would be ignited, and a glorious bonfire on a gigantic scale would ensue. The fire would burn up not only all the logs and dead leaves upon the ground, but, spreading its way through the forest, would do considerable damage to the living trees, burning as it often did for weeks. It was, however, a grand sight to watch it through the darkness of the night, and when the fire running up the hollow trunk of some dead tree would burst out in a blaze at the top, we children were filled with enthusiasm, and used to call them 'our beacon lights.' Never did brother Horace seem happier than during that fiery season, and often he and brother Barnes spent the greater portion of the night among the burning log-piles, stirring up the fires when they smouldered, and throwing on brush and fresh logs.
"During the year that he worked at his trade upon the shores of Lake Erie, we saw him more frequently; but the visit that I remember with the greatest pleasure was one that he made us just after establishing his New Yorker. I was much impressed during this last visit with a marked change in brother's taste and character—a change indicated as much by his reading as by his external appearance. His trunk was now filled with standard works and volumes of poems, instead of treatises upon science, and he appeared in a perpetual rose-dream. He seemed to me the embodiment of romance and poesy, and now as I think of him with his pure, unselfish nature, so early devoted to what was noblest and best, I can only compare him to the high-minded boy-saint, the chaste, seraphic Aloysius.
"It was while at home this time that he wrote his poem 'The Faded Stars,' that was published in the New Yorker, and copied into several leading journals—"