66 NEIGHBORS WITH CLAWS AND HOOFS. 



place ; but now and then one will venture to seize the bait 

 and get caught. 



12. "A fox's manner of approaching a baited" trap is 

 peculiar. He trots around in circles, beginning with large 

 ones, and gradually narrowing them until he reaches the 

 bait, upon which he keeps constantly his suspicious but 

 greedy eye. After watching an old fox approach a trap 

 in this way, and get near enough to seize the bait, and 

 then seeing him turn and get away from the spot as fast 

 as he could, I concluded that I knew a trick worth two of 

 his. I placed my bait on the ground and set my trap, 

 nicely hidden from view, several feet away. When the 

 fox came and began his circling around, with his eyes 

 constantly on the meat he coveted, the first thing he knew 

 he stepped on the hidden trap, and he was no longer in- 

 terested in the bait that tempted him. I never knew this 

 manner of setting a fox-trap to fail in capturing the fox if 

 one came to inspect the bait where it was set." 



CHAPTER XL 

 PESTS OF THE HOUSEHOLD. 



" When I was a bachelor I lived by myself, 

 And all the bread and cheese I had I laid upon a shelf; 

 But the rats and the mice they made such a strife, 

 I was forced to go to London to buy me a wife." 



1. So we learn from Mother Goose herself that even 

 in the golden age of childhood the bread and cheese 

 suffered from nibbling the same as now, and that, prob- 

 ably as now, sleepers in the night then were disturbed 

 by gnawings in the cupboard, or by the soft pattering of 



