A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



understanding growing up between these two and 

 Charlie that it was high time the killing began. 

 One morning I surprised the infant in the wood 

 shed warching Gabe at work on a hickory limb. 

 I was informed that the preparation was for bosen- 

 narrers. My lamb had passed the stone age. 

 &quot; What on earth do you want with a bow and 

 arrows ? &quot; I asked. 



&quot;Want to kill birds,&quot; he said triumphantly. 



And there was the old Adam beginning to peep 

 out in my Arcadia. 



The Brahminical growth was very curious, and 

 I now see that it was a part of the general obedi 

 ence to which I had subjected myself. No sooner 

 had I condescended to strip off my aggressive 

 individuality for a while, and put myself implicitly 

 into the general order, and drift with the ordained 

 arrangement, than the general order came inquir 

 ingly up to my threshold and held out paws and 

 beaks and mandibles, and wagged tails as if it car 

 ried in its poor, half-developed consciousness a 

 kindly desire to renew the paradisaical truce. It 

 is astonishing how quickly the gossip of the 

 woods carries. The birds told the squirrels and 

 the squirrels told the woodchucks : &quot; That man 

 and his boy in the Hotchkiss hut are not killers. 

 It is incredible, but true, they haven t destroyed 

 anything since they arrived.&quot; 



This rumour appeared to have excited the curi 

 osity of every bug and beast and creeping thing 

 within half a mile of us. There was one adven 

 turous chipmunk which, having heard these fly- 



40 



