“A WILD CREATURE THAT WON’T GET OUT OF YOUR WAY”
And so it seemed to the old botanist who came five hundred miles to find the tiny pyxie in the sandy swamps of southern New Jersey. So it will seem to you—the whole world will not only seem richer, but will be richer for you—when you have found the witch-hazel bush all covered with summer’s gold in the bleak woods of November.
VII
You ought to see a big pile of golden pumpkins in some farmhouse shed or beside the great barn door. You ought to see a field of corn in the shock; hay in a barn mow; the jars of fruit, the potatoes, apples, and great chunks of wood in the farmhouse cellar. You ought to see how a farmer gets ready for the winter—the comfort, the plenty, the sufficiency of it all!
VIII
You ought to see how the muskrats, too, get ready for the winter, and the bees and the flowers and the trees and the frogs—everything. Winter is coming. The cold will kill—if it has a chance. But see how it has no chance. How is it that the bees will buzz, the flowers open, the birds sing, the frogs croak again next spring as if there had been no freezing, killing weather? Go out and see why for yourselves.