No one can know how I
have loved the woods, the streams, the trails of the wild, the ways of
the things of slender limbs, of fine nose, of great eager ears, of mild
wary eyes, and of vague and half-revealed forms and colors. I have been
their friend and mortal enemy. I have so loved them that I longed to
kill them. But I gave them far more than a fair chance.
"How many I have missed to one I have killed! How often the fierce
arrow hissed its threat close by the wide ears! How often the puff of
lifted feathers has marked the innocuous passage of my very best arrow!
How often the roar of wings has replied to the 'chuck' of my
steel-head shaft as it stabbed the tree branch under the grouse's feet!
_Oh, le bon temps, que de siecle de fer_.
"Let me know whether I sent you _Deep in Okefinokee Swamp_. I enclose
you a little poem published long ago in _Forest and Stream_ and picked
up by the _Literary Digest_ and other periodicals. You will, I think,
feel the love of the bow, and the outdoors, as well as the great cry
for the lost brother running through the long sob that pervades it.
"Send me anything you publish, for I know I should be pleased.
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