ens his tongue.

Such things remind one of the waste, the friction that is going on all
about us, even when the wheels of life run the most smoothly. A fox
cannot trip along the top of a stone wall so lightly but that he will
leave enough of himself to betray his course to the hound for hours
afterward. When the boys play "hare and hounds" the hare scatters bits
of paper to give a clew to the pursuers, but he scatters himself much
more freely if only our sight and scent were sharp enough to detect the
fragments. Even the fish leave a trail in the water, and it is said the
otter will pursue them by it. The birds make a track in the air, only
their enemies hunt by sight rather than by scent. The fox baffles the
hound most upon a hard crust of frozen snow; the scent will not hold to
the smooth, bead-like granules.

Judged by the eye alone, the fox is the lightest and most buoyant
creature that runs. His soft wrapping of fur conceals the muscular play
and effort that is so obvious in the hound that pursues him, and he
comes bounding along precisely as if blown by a gentle wind. His massive
tail is carried as if it floated upon the air by its own lightness.

The hound is not remarkable for his fleetness, but how he will
hang!--often running late into the night and sometimes till morning,
from ridge to ridge, from peak to peak; now on the mountain, now
crossing the valley, now playing about a large slope of uplying pasture
fields. At times the fox has a pretty well-defined orbit, and the hunter
knows where to intercept him. Again he leads off like a comet, quite
beyond the system of hills and ridges upon which he was started, and his
return is entirely a matter of conjecture; but if the day be not more
than half spent, the chances are that the fox will be back before night,
though the sportsman's patience seldom holds out that long.

The hound is a most interesting dog. How solemn and long-visaged he
is--how peaceful and well-disposed! He is the Quaker among dogs. All
the viciousness and currishness seem to have been weeded out of him;
he seldom quarrels, or fights, or plays, like other dogs. Two strange
hounds, meeting for the first time, behave as civilly toward each other
as if two men. I know a hound that has an ancient, wrinkled, human,
far-away look that reminds one of the bust of Homer among the Elgin
marbles. He looks like the mountains toward which his heart yearns so
much.

The hound is a great puzzle to the fa