The diameter of the four uprights
was not quite a foot, all told, and these were sawn of unequal lengths
of four, six, seven, and nine inches, care being taken not to "haggle,"
as Larry calls it, the clean white bark in the process.
Then Bart went to work with augur and round chisel, and bored and
chipped out the holes for the glass tubes, incidentally breaking two
glasses before we had comfortably settled the four, for they must fit
snugly enough not to wiggle and tip, and yet not so tight as to bind and
prevent removal for cleaning purposes. This little stand of natural wood
was no sooner finished and mounted on the camp table than its
possibilities began to crowd around it. Ferns being the nearest at hand,
I crawled over the crumbling bank wall into the Opal Farm meadow and
gathered hay-scented, wood, and lady ferns from along the fence line and
grouped them loosely in the stand. The effect was magical, a bit of its
haunt following the fern indoors.
Next day I gathered in the hemlock woods a basket of the waxy,
spotted-leaved pipsissewa, together with spikes and garlands of club
moss.
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