executed. Father examined the poor fellow's stomach in
search of sure evidence, and discovered the heads of eight chickens
that he had devoured at his last meal. So poor Watch was killed simply
because his taste for chickens was too much like our own. Think of the
millions of squabs that preaching, praying men and women kill and eat,
with all sorts of other animals great and small, young and old, while
eloquently discoursing on the coming of the blessed peaceful,
bloodless millennium! Think of the passenger pigeons that fifty or
sixty years ago filled the woods and sky over half the continent, now
exterminated by beating down the young from the nests together with
the brooding parents, before they could try their wonderful wings; by
trapping them in nets, feeding them to hogs, etc. None of our fellow
mortals is safe who eats what we eat, who in any way interferes with
our pleasures, or who may be used for work or food, clothing or
ornament, or mere cruel, sportish amusement. Fortunately many are too
small to be seen, and therefore enjoy life beyond our reach. And in
looking through God's great stone books made up of records reaching
back millions and millions of years, it is a great comfort to learn
that vast multitudes of creatures, great and small and infinite in
number, lived and had a good time in God's love before man was
created.

The old Scotch fashion of whipping for every act of disobedience or of
simple, playful forgetfulness was still kept up in the wilderness, and
of course many of those whippings fell upon me. Most of them were
outrageously severe, and utterly barren of fun. But here is one that
was nearly all fun.

Father was busy hauling lumber for the frame house that was to be got
ready for the arrival of my mother, sisters, and brother, left behind
in Scotland. One morning, when he was ready to start for another load,
his ox-whip was not to be found. He asked me if I knew anything about
it. I told him I didn't know where it was, but Scotch conscience
compelled me to confess that when I was playing with it I had tied it
to Watch's tail, and that he ran away, dragging it through the grass,
and came back without it. "It must have slipped off his tail," I said,
and so I didn't know where it was. This honest, straightforward little
story made father so angry that he exclaimed with heavy, foreboding
emphasis: "The very deevil's in that boy!" David, who had been playing
with me and was perhaps about as resp