THE TAKING OF THE BEAVER 113 



ladies, who don t want the trouble of training a family. 

 Whatever these solitaries are naturalists and hunters 

 differ they have the wit to keep alive; but the poor 

 little beavers rush right into the jaws of death. Why 

 do they? For the same reason probably, if they could 

 answer, that people trample each other to death when 

 there is an alarm in a crowd. 



They cower in the terrible pen, knowing nothing 

 at all about their hides being valued all the way from 

 fifty cents to three dollars, according to the quality; 

 nothing about the dignity of being a coin of the realm 

 in the Northern wilderness, where one beaver-skin sets 

 the value for mink, otter, marten, bear, and all other 

 skins, one pound of tobacco, one kettle, five pounds of 

 shot, a pint of brandy, and half a yard of cloth; noth 

 ing about the rascally Indians long ago bartering forty 

 of their hides for a scrap of iron and a great com 

 pany sending one hundred thousand beaver-skins in a 

 single year to make hats and cloaks for the courtiers 

 of Europe; nothing about the laws of man forbidding 

 the killing of beaver till their number increase. 



All the little beaver remembers is that it opened 

 its eyes to daylight in the time of soft, green grasses; 

 and that as soon as it got strong enough on a milk diet 

 to travel, the mother led the whole family of kittens 

 usually three or four down the slanting doorway of 

 their dim house for a swim; and that she taught them 

 how to nibble the dainty, green shrubs along the bank ; 

 and then the entire colony went for the most glorious, 

 pell-mell splash up-stream to fresh ponds. No more 

 sleeping in that stifling lodge; but beds in soft grass 

 like a goose-nest all night, and tumbling in the water 



