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forests suddenly teeming with ambrosial sweets, and nothing, I am told, can exceed the greedy relish with which they banquet for the first time upon this unbought luxury of the wilderness.

3. At present the honey-bee swarms in myriads, in the noble groves and forests which skirt and intersect the prairies and extend along the alluvial bottoms of the river. It seems to me as if these beautiful regions answer literally to the description of the land of promise, "a land flowing with milk and honey;" for the rich pasturage of the prairies is calculated to sustain herds of cattle as countless as the sands upon the sea-shore, while the flowers with which they are enameled render them a very paradise for the nectarseeking bee.

4. We had not been long in the camp when a party set out in quest of a bee-tree, and, being curious to witness the sport, I gladly accepted an invitation to accompany them. The party was headed by a veteran bee-hunter, a tall, lank fellow in home-spun garb that hung loosely about his limbs, and a straw hat shaped not unlike a bee-hive; a comrade, equally uncouth in garb, and without a hat, straddled along at his heels, with a long rifle on his shoulder. To these succeeded half a dozen others, some with axes and some with rifles, for no one stirs far from the camp without his firearm, so as to be ready either for wild deer or wild Indian.

5. After proceeding some distance we came to an open glade on the skirts of the forest. Here our leader halted, and then advanced quietly to a low bush, on the top of which I perceived a piece of honey-comb. This I found was the bait or lure for the wild bees.

Several were humming about When they had laden them

it, and diving into its cells. selves with honey they would rise into the air, and dart off in a straight line almost with the velocity of a bullet. The

hunters watched attentively the course they took, and then set off in the same direction, stumbling along over twisted roots and fallen trees, with their eyes turned up to the sky. In this way they traced the honey-laden bees to their hive, in the hollow trunk of a blasted oak, where, after buzzing about for a moment, they entered a hole about sixty feet from the ground.

6. Two of the bee-hunters now plied their axes vigorously at the foot of the tree, to level it with the ground. The mere spectators and amateurs, in the meantime, drew off to a cautious distance, to be out of the way of the falling of the tree and the vengeance of its inmates. The jarring blows of the ax seemed to have no effect in alarming or disturbing this most industrious community. They continued to ply at their usual occupations, some arriving full-freighted into port, others sallying forth on new expeditions, like so many merchantmen in a money-making metropolis, little suspicious of impending bankruptcy and downfall. Even a loud crack which announced the disrupture of the trunk, failed to divert their attention from the intense pursuit of gain; at length down came the tree with a tremendous crash, bursting open from end to end, and displaying all the hoarded treasures of the commonwealth.

7. One of the hunters immediately ran up with a wisp of lighted hay as a defense against the bees. The latter, however, made no attack and sought no revenge; they seemed stupefied by the catastrophe and unsuspicious of its cause, and remained crawling and buzzing about the ruins without offering us any molestations. Every one of the party now fell to, with spoon and hunting-knife, to scoop out the flakes of honey-comb with which the hollow trunk was stored. Some of them were of old date and a deep brown color; others were beautifully white, and the honey in their cells

was almost limpid. Such of the combs as were entire were placed in camp-kettles, to be conveyed to the encampment; those which had been shivered in the fall were devoured upon the spot. Every stark bee-hunter was to be seen with a rich morsel in his hand, dripping about his fingers, and disappearing as rapidly as a cream tart before the holiday appetite of a school-boy.

8. Nor was it the bee-hunters alone that profited by the downfall of this industrious community; as if the bees would carry through the similitude of their habits with those of laborious and gainful man. I beheld numbers from rival hives, arriving on eager wing, to enrich themselves with the ruins of their neighbors. These busied themselves as eagerly and cheerfully as so many wreckers on an Indiaman that has been driven on shore; plunging into the cells of the broken honey-combs, banqueting greedily on the spoil, and then winging their way full-freighted to their homes. As to the poor proprietors of the ruin, they seemed to have no heart to do anything, not even to taste the nectar that flowed around them; but crawled backwards and forwards, in vacant desolation, as I have seen a poor fellow with his hands in his pockets, whistling vacantly and despondingly about the ruins of his house that had been burnt.

9. It is difficult to describe the bewilderment and confusion of the bees of the bankrupt hive who had been absent at the time of the catastrophe, and who arrived from time to time with full cargoes from abroad. At first they wheeled about in the air, in the place where the fallen tree had once reared its head, astonished at finding it all a vacuum. length, as if comprehending their disaster, they settled down in clusters on a dry branch of a neighboring tree, whence they seemed to contemplate the prostrate ruin, and to buzz forth doleful lamentations over the downfall of their republic.

At

It was a scene on which the "melancholy Jacques" might have moralized by the hour.

10. We now abandoned the place, leaving much honey in the hollow of the tree. "It will all be cleared off by varmint," said one of the rangers. "What vermin?" asked I. "Oh, bears and skunks and raccoons and 'possums. The bears is the knowingest varmint for finding out a beetree in the world. They'll gnaw for days together at the trunk, till they make a hole big enough to get in their paws, and then they'll haul out honey, bees, and all."

XCVII. THE SONG OF THE SHIRT.

THOMAS HOOD.

1. With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread.
Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch,
She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"

2. "Work! work! work!

While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work-work-work

Till the stars shine through the roof!

It's oh! to be a slave

Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!

3. "Work-work-work

Till the brain begins to swim; Work-work-work

Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam and gusset and band,

Band and gusset and seam,

Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!

4. "Oh, men with sisters dear!
Oh, men with mothers and wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch-stitch-stitch,

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt!

5. "But why do I talk of death,
That phantom of grisly bone?
I hardly fear his terrible shape,
It seems so like my own—
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fasts I keep;

O God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!

6. "Work-work-work!

My labor never flags;

And what are its wages?

A bed of straw,

A crust of bread—and rags;

That shattered roof-and this naked floor

A table- -a broken chair —

And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank

For sometimes falling there!

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