ly for man, to be
petted, spoiled, slaughtered, or enslaved.

At first we were afraid of snakes, but soon learned that most of them
were harmless. The only venomous species seen on our farm were the
rattlesnake and the copperhead, one of each. David saw the rattler,
and we both saw the copperhead. One day, when my brother came in from
his work, he reported that he had seen a snake that made a queer buzzy
noise with its tail. This was the only rattlesnake seen on our farm,
though we heard of them being common on limestone hills eight or ten
miles distant. We discovered the copperhead when we were ploughing,
and we saw and felt at the first long, fixed, half-charmed, admiring
stare at him that he was an awfully dangerous fellow. Every fibre of
his strong, lithe, quivering body, his burnished copper-colored head,
and above all his fierce, able eyes, seemed to be overflowing full of
deadly power, and bade us beware. And yet it is only fair to say that
this terrible, beautiful reptile showed no disposition to hurt us
until we threw clods at him and tried to head him off from a log fence
into which he was trying to escape. We were barefooted and of course
afraid to let him get very near, while we vainly battered him with the
loose sandy clods of the freshly ploughed field to hold him back until
we could get a stick. Looking us in the eyes after a moment's pause,
he probably saw we were afraid, and he came right straight at us,
snapping and looking terrible, drove us out of his way, and won his
fight.

Out on the open sandy hills there were a good many thick burly blow
snakes, the kind that puff themselves up and hiss. Our Yankee declared
that their breath was very poisonous and that we must not go near
them. A handsome ringed species common in damp, shady places was, he
told us, the most wonderful of all the snakes, for if chopped into
pieces, however small, the fragments would wriggle themselves together
again, and the restored snake would go on about its business as if
nothing had happened. The commonest kinds were the striped slender
species of the meadows and streams, good swimmers, that lived mostly
on frogs.

Once I observed one of the larger ones, about two feet long, pursuing
a frog in our meadow, and it was wonderful to see how fast the
legless, footless, wingless, finless hunter could run. The frog, of
course, knew its enemy and was making desperate efforts to escape to
the water and hide in the marsh mud. He wa