CHAPTER VII 



THE PALACE IN THE PIG-PEN 



YOU have taken a handful of my wooded 

 acres/' says Nature to me, " and if you have 

 not improved them, you at least have 

 changed them greatly. But they are mine still. Be 

 friendly now, go softly, and you shall have them all 

 and I shall have them all, too. We will share them 

 together." 



And we do. Every part of the fourteen acres is 

 mine, yielding some kind of food or fuel or shelter. 

 And every foot, yes, every foot, is Nature's ; as entirely 

 hers as when the thick primeval forest stood here, 

 The apple trees are hers as much as mine, and she 

 has ten different bird families that I know of, living 

 in them this spring. A pair of crows and a pair of 

 red-tailed hawks are nesting in the wood-lot; there 

 are at least three families of chipmunks in as many 

 of my stone-piles ; a fine old tree-toad sleeps on the 

 porch under the climbing rose; a hornet's nest hangs 

 in a corner of the eaves; a small colony of swifts 

 thunder in the chimney ; swallows twitter in the hay- 

 loft ; a chipmunk and a half-tame gray squirrel feed 

 in the barn ; and to bring an end to this bare be- 

 ginning under the roof of the pig-pen dwell a 

 pair of phoebes. 



