Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/199

Rh had better not set up a house or a monument, but dig a hole in the ground. Humility helps to permanence. The lower you get, the less danger of falling. Nature is slower to fill up than to pull down, though she will do either with all thoroughness, give her time enough. To her a man's life is but a clock's tick, and all his constructions are but child's play in the sand. A trite bit of moralizing? Well, perhaps it is; but it sounded anything but trite, as the old cellar-hole spoke it to me. A word is like a bullet: its force is in the power behind it.

Not far beyond this point we found ourselves in a gray-birch swamp. Here, if anywhere, should be the nests we were in search of. And soon we began to see them, one here, another there. We followed the same course with them all; my companion shook or jarred the tree, while I stood off and watched for the squirrels. And the result was alike in all cases. Every nest was empty. We tried at least a score, and had our labor for our pains. "There are no flying squirrels this year," my companion kept saying. Perhaps they had migrated.