s his rustic name of
_scythe-whet_. I protect my game as jealously as an English squire. If
anybody had ooelogized a certain cuckoo's nest I know of (I have a pair
in my garden every year), it would have left me a sore place in my mind
for weeks. I love to bring these aborigines back to the mansuetude they
showed to the early voyagers, and before (forgive the involuntary pun),
they had grown accustomed to man and knew his savage ways. And they
repay your kindness with a sweet familiarity too delicate ever to breed
contempt. I have made a Penn-treaty with them, preferring that to the
Puritan way with the native, which converted them to a little Hebraism
and a great deal of Medford rum. If they will not come near enough to me
(as most of them will), I bring them close with an opera-glass,--a much
better weapon than a gun. I would not, if I could, convert them from
their pretty pagan ways. The only one I sometimes have savage doubts
about, is the red squirrel. I _think_ he ooelogizes; I _know_ he eats
cherries, (we counted five of them at one time in a single tree, the
stones pattering down like the sparse hail that preludes a storm), and
that he knaws off the small end of pears to get at the seeds. He steals
the corn from under the noses of my poultry. But what would you have? He
will come down upon the limb of the tree I am lying under, till he is
within a yard of me. He and his mate will scurry up and down the great
black-walnut for my diversion, chattering like monkeys. Can I sign his
death-warrant who has tolerated me about his grounds so long? Not I. Let
them steal, and welcome, I am sure I should, had I the same bringing up
and the same temptation. As for the birds, I do not believe there is one
of them but does more good than harm; and of how many featherless bipeds
can this be said.

* * * * *

=_220._= CHAUCER'S LOVE OF NATURE.

He was the first great poet who really loved outward nature as the
source of conscious pleasurable emotion. The Troubadour hailed the
return of spring, but with him it was a piece of empty ritualism.
Chaucer took a true delight in the new green of the leaves, and the
return of singing birds--a delight as simple as that of Robin Hood:--

"In summer when the shaws be sheen,
And leaves be large and long,
It is full merry in fair forest
To hear the small birds' song."

He has never so much as heard of the burthen and the mystery of all
this uninte