A TIME TO REFLECT

When the shadows from the hills have gown longer, caused by the departing sun, kindly reflect of your days spent amid the solitude of Mother Nature, which were the sweetest enjoyment to you.

Sometime, somewhere, in that undiscovered paradise high in the heavens whose scenes are painted by His hand, shall you find a happy hunting ground where the axe of the lumberman has not penetrated; where the solemnities of the immense woodland—its brooding calm, its sequestered depths, its flickering lights and beckoning shadows—remain unchanged year after year; where the sky is filled with countless wild geese and ducks; where, with the shades of shotguns whose like are made no more, and with pointers and retrievers whose like dwell not now upon this earth, shall you hunt the ghosts of wildlife that has no closed season.

“If a man could be born when he’s old

 And gradually grow young,

 The wisdom he’d gain and the lore he’d attain

 Are not easily said or sung.”