animals were to be found, and along the shores were runways that had
been worn deep in the soil by the tread of generation after generation
of dainty little cloven hoofs. I suppose that some of those paths have
been used by the deer for hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of years._

_The lands around the entire lake were offered for sale by the United
States Government at the ridiculously low price which Uncle Sam has
asked for most of his possessions; and with the help of some friends my
father bought the whole shore. During the years which followed he was
occupied in various ways, and some of the best recollections of my
boyhood are of the days and the nights which I spent with him on his
fishing-tug, steaming about the Straits of Mackinac and the northern
part of Lake Huron. But he could not forget the Glimmerglass, that
little wild lake up in the woods. He had fallen in love with it at first
sight, and at last he took his family and went there to live._

_Human neighbors were scarce around the lake, and perhaps that was one
reason why we took such a lively interest in the other residents--those
who were there ahead of us. "Him and me's chums," my small sister said
of the red-squirrel that hung around the log-barn. And some of the
animals seemed to take a very lively interest in us. The chipmunks came
into the house occasionally, on foraging expeditions; and so, I regret
to say, did the skunks. There was a woodchuck who used to come to the
back door, looking for scraps, and who learned to sit bolt upright and
hold a pancake in his fore paws while he nibbled at it, without being in
the least disturbed by the presence and the comments of half a dozen
spectators. The porcupines became a never-ending nuisance, for they made
almost nightly visits to the woodshed. To kill them was of little use,
for the next night--or perhaps before morning--there were others to take
their places. Once in a while one of them would climb up onto the roof
of the house; and between his teeth and his feet and the rattling of his
quills on the shingles, the racket that he made was out of all
proportion to his size._

It is sweet to lie at evening in your little trundle-bed,
And to listen to a porky gnawing shingles overhead;
Porky, porky, porky, porky;
Gnawing shingles overhead.

_The wolves had been pretty nearly exterminated since my father's first
visit to the lake, and we saw little or nothing of