Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/270

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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.

and all men of money, I go in search of arrowheads when the season comes round again. So I help myself to live worthily, loving my life as I should. It is a good collyrium to look on the bare earth, to pore over it so much, getting strength to all your senses, like Antæus. You can hardly name a more innocent or wholesome entertainment. As I am thus engaged I hear the rumble of the bowling-alley's thunder, which has begun again in the village. It comes before the earliest natural thunder. But what its lightning is, and what atmospheres it purifies, I do not know. . . . . I have not decided whether I had better publish my experience in searching for arrowheads in three volumes with plates, or try to compress it into one. These durable implements seem to have been suggested to the Indian mechanic with a view to my entertainment in a succeeding period. After all the labor expended on it, the bolt may have been shot but once, perchance, and the shaft, once attached to it, decayed, and there lay the arrowhead, sinking into the ground, awaiting me. They lie all over the hills with like expectation, and in due time the husbandman is sent, and, tempted by the promise of corn or rye, he plows the land and turns them up to my view. Many as I have found, methinks the last one gave me about the same delight that the first did. Some time