their hearts instead of on their backs or in their dinners. In the
mean time we may just as well as not learn to live clean, innocent
lives instead of slimy, bloody ones. All hale, red-blooded boys are
savage, the best and boldest the savagest, fond of hunting and
fishing. But when thoughtless childhood is past, the best rise the
highest above all this bloody flesh and sport business, the wild
foundational animal dying out day by day, as divine uplifting,
transfiguring charity grows in.

Hares and rabbits were seldom seen when we first settled in the
Wisconsin woods, but they multiplied rapidly after the animals that
preyed upon them had been thinned out or exterminated, and food and
shelter supplied in grain-fields and log fences and the thickets of
young oaks that grew up in pastures after the annual grass fires were
kept out. Catching hares in the winter-time, when they were hidden in
hollow fence-logs, was a favorite pastime with many of the boys whose
fathers allowed them time to enjoy the sport. Occasionally a stout,
lithe hare was carried out into an open snow-covered field, set free,
and given a chance for its life in a race with a dog. When the snow
was not too soft and deep, it usually made good its escape, for our
dogs were only fat, short-legged mongrels. We sometimes discovered
hares in standing hollow trees, crouching on decayed punky wood at the
bottom, as far back as possible from the opening, but when alarmed
they managed to climb to a considerable height if the hollow was not
too wide, by bracing themselves against the sides.

Foxes, though not uncommon, we boys held steadily to work seldom saw,
and as they found plenty of prairie chickens for themselves and
families, they did not often come near the farmer's hen-roosts.
Nevertheless the discovery of their dens was considered important. No
matter how deep the den might be, it was thoroughly explored with pick
and shovel by sport-loving settlers at a time when they judged the fox
was likely to be at home, but I cannot remember any case in our
neighborhood where the fox was actually captured. In one of the dens a
mile or two from our farm a lot of prairie chickens were found and
some smaller birds.

Badger dens were far more common than fox dens. One of our fields was
named Badger Hill from the number of badger holes in a hill at the end
of it, but I cannot remember seeing a single one of the inhabitants.

On a stormy day in the middle of an unusuall