With all this kindness of
feeling toward his victims, Boden had nothing of the transcendental
folly that usually accompanies the sentimentalism of the
exaggerated, but his feelings and impulses were simple and direct,
though so often gentle and humane. He knew that the bee, like all
the other inferior animals of creation, was placed at the
disposition of man, and did not scruple to profit by the power thus
beneficently bestowed, though he exercised it gently, and with a
proper discrimination between its use and its abuse.
Neither of the men toiled much, as the canoe floated down the
stream. Very slight impulses served to give their buoyant craft a
reasonably swift motion, and the current itself was a material
assistant. These circumstances gave an opportunity for conversation,
as the canoe glided onward.
"A'ter all," suddenly exclaimed Waring, who had been examining the
pile of kegs for some time in silence--"a'ter all, Bourdon, your
trade is an oncommon one! A most extr'ornary and oncommon callin'!"
"More so, think you, Gershom, than swallowing whiskey, morning,
noon, and night?" answered the bee-hunter, with a quiet smile.
"Aye, but that's not a reg'lar callin'; only a likin'! Now a man may
have a likin' to a hundred things in which he don't deal.
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