It's very quiet around most of the bay. There are big distances. Nobody crowds you. There is lots of food. I like it.

The man said there used to be mountains of oyster shells, piled up in places along the wharves. Now the State of Maryland uses half of all the shells to replant oysters so we won't lose too many of them. They are called "oyster beds."

Lots of people owned cottages and beautiful boats, little ones with cabins and big yachts too. They sometimes lived on the boats. They cost a lot of money and were made out of the hardest, shiniest wood. It would be wonderful to have one.

Maryland is a state with everything to be proud of: a State House and a flower and a song and a flag and even a tree. The flower is the Black-eyed Susan. The song is "Maryland, My Maryland." We've already discussed the flag.

There is a big tree in a state park. It's called Wye Oak State Park. It's in Wye Mills, in Talbot County, in the Bay Country. It's near an old church called Old Wye Church, that was finished in 1721.

The Wye Oak was there before the Ark and the Dove, the solid English oak ships, came into the bay in 1634. It is a white oak tree, not like our oaks at 602 that grew very high and very thin.

This one spreads. It is wider than any other white oak in the country. It is on Highway 622. The state put it in a one-tree State Forest and put white fences around it. It is fed and trimmed and wired all the time. We are proud of the Wye Oak Tree.

It is nearly twenty-eight feet wide, ninety-five feet high, and it spreads one hundred sixty-five feet. What a great tree!

When I got really sick, I laid in bed a lot. Mommy sang to me. She sang, "Sweet summer breeze, whispering trees, kiss me, kiss me, again."

After I started to have my tummy aches, I got a terrible pain all the time in my left leg. I lost a lot of weight all of a sudden.

Mommy was crying in the doctor's office because she knew I was really sick. The doctor thought I had something in back of my left kidney that could be giving me the pain in my left leg. He wanted me to go to the hospital in the children's ward.

I went, but Mommy couldn't stay with me. They took tests on me, and Mommy couldn't come to see me. I was very sad because she left me a note that she couldn't be there until Sunday during the visiting hours.

When she came she was sad, too. I could see she had been crying a lot. I said to her, "Mommy, I don't care what they do to me, as long as you can stay with me."

Mommy got Grandmommy to the hospital to help get a private room for us to be together. Then we were happier. My doctor helped us get it. He was good to us.

He called another doctor who is a urologist, Dr. Hugh Jewett, and this doctor gave me sleeping medicine and examined me.

I had a hard time coming out of the anesthetic, but I finally heard Mommy calling to me, and I came. She looked at me as though she wanted to say something, but she didn't.

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