FROM A NEW ENGLAND HILLSIDE. 279 



three to go into the passageway, and then 

 continued my work outside. After a while 

 one gradually backed out of the passage, 

 but it was some moments before it turned 

 around and seemed to realize the new order 

 of things. With head erect, it gazed upon 

 the great universe, at the green leaves and 

 the blue sky and the great sun, and I am 

 sure it must have felt unutterable things. 

 At all events, it did not utter any, and 

 shortly afterward, with several others, it 

 was busily engaged pecking away at the 

 fresh earth near the mouth of the tunnel 

 leading to its artificial foster mother. And 

 before long, eleven little lumps of down, 

 brown and black and yellow. Brown Leg 

 horn and Minorca and Light Brahma, were 

 scattered around over quite a space of 

 ground, as happily and naturally engaged 

 as if they had not been introduced into this 

 great world of ours a short ten minutes 

 before. 



I counted only eleven, and hearing a 

 plaintive peep-peep-ing within, I examined 

 and discovered that Benjamin, the poor 

 foundling of the incubator, had not had 

 courage to make a sortie, but, lost in the 

 vast solitude of the otherwise empty box, 

 was making his sad plight known in the 



