GRANT SHOWERMAN
Professor Showerman is another author-teacher whom Wisconsin may claim as her own. He was born at Brookfield in 1870, was graduated from the University in 1896, and took his doctorate in 1900. He had the advantage of two years' study at Rome, where he was Fellow of the Archaeological Institute of America in the American School of Classical Studies. Since returning, he has been Professor of Latin Literature at his Alma Mater. He is member of many learned societies, and is the author of "With the Professor" and "The Indian Stream Republic and Luther Parker," besides many articles which are familiar to readers of the Atlantic Monthly and other leading periodicals.
His style will be noted at once by the careful reader as being different from that of most other prose writers whose works we quote here. It is more leisurely. He brings to the common things about us in Nature the kindly, alert intelligence of one who has seen many things in many lands, but who has the memory to re-create truthfully the days of youth.
A LAD'S RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS BOYHOOD HAUNTS AND EXPERIENCES IN THE EARLIER DAYS
"IN OCTOBER." From the Sewanee Review.
... On a late October Saturday morning, after a week in school at the village, you take your gun and a favorite play, whistle to already eager Billy, and follow the path to the Brush. You traverse its quiet length by the winding road that is always mysterious and full of charm, however often you tread it, you cross the stubbled barley-field that borders Lovers' Lane, and cross the lane itself and enter the Woods. You feel the friendly book in your pocket, and pat the friendly dog at your side, restfully conscious that you will spend neither profitless nor companionless hours. To be sure, you have in the back of your mind a thought or two about fox squirrels, or even red squirrels, and of a stew-pie—the savor of it is in your sensitive nostrils; but these thoughts are only vague. Your eyes are not greedily watchful—only moderately so; you have already begun to outgrow the barbarous boyhood delight of mere killing. Good will reigns in your breast.
You advance cautiously, the breech-loader resting in the bend of your left arm, every step causing pleasant murmurs among the autumn leaves. When you pause, the sound of your heart-beats is audible. The genial golden tone of Indian Summer pervades the air.
When you have penetrated to the heart of the Woods, you sit down on a familiar log, the gun caressingly across your knees, and drink in the fine wine of woodland enjoyment! Ah, the silence of the Woods! How deep and how full of mystery! And how deeper whenever some note of life emphasizes the stillness—the knocking of a woodpecker, the cry of a sapsucker, the scream of a jay, the caw of a crow aloft on some decayed topmost branch in the distance!
A distant barking note makes you start. There is a fox squirrel over yonder somewhere, beyond the ruins of the old arch. You strain your attention toward the sound. Billy sits bolt upright, with round eyes, questioning ears, and suspended breath.
But just as you are thinking of getting up, a nut drops with a thump on the log beside you and bounds lightly into the leaves at your feet. You know what that means! You look up instantly and catch just a glimpse of a sweeping foxy tail as it vanishes along a big branch and around the thick stem of a tree. He goes up forty or fifty feet, and then, far out on the big oak branch, lies close to the bark, out of sight.
Billy whines uneasily; he shivers with excitement. You say: "Sit still, Billy!"