A MOUNTAIN POND 89 



frightened horse to a sapling, cut a switch, 

 killed the snake, threw it out of the road, 

 remounted, and went on about her business. 

 It is one advantage of life in wild surround- 

 ings that it encourages self-reliance. 



In all places, nevertheless, and under all 

 conditions, human nature remains a para- 

 doxical compound. A mountain woman, 

 while ploughing, came into close quarters 

 with a rattlesnake. To save herself she 

 sprang backward, fell against a stone, and in 

 the fall broke her wrist. No doctor being 

 within call, she set the bone herself, made 

 and adjusted a rude splint, and now, as the 

 lady who told me the story expressed it, 

 " has a pretty good arm." That was plucky. 

 But the same woman suffered from an aching 

 tooth some time afterward, and was advised 

 to have it extracted. She would do no such 

 thing. She could n't. She had a tooth 

 pulled once, and it hurt her so that she 

 would never do it again. 



Anthropology and ornithology were very 

 agreeably mingled for me on the Hamburg 

 road, though it seems impossible for me 

 to stay there, the reader may say, where 

 passers-by were frequent enough to keep me 



