CHAP. X A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE BEAR 289 



milky condition of sweet half-ripeness which so 

 attracts the squirrels, the mice, the birds and 

 you and me, if you please; and when he has 

 found it he strips back the husk as deftly as any 

 " neat-handed Phyllis," and disposes of the succu- 

 lent kernels with ease and rapidity. This is his 

 occupation and delight in the still hot August 

 nights, and no one has pictured it forth to our im- 

 agination as delicately as does Rowland Robinson 

 in his " New England Fields and Woods" : 



" Above the katydid's strident cry and the 

 piper's [green cricket's] incessant notes, a wild, 

 tremulous whinny shivers through the gloom at 

 intervals, now from a distant field or wood, now 

 from the near orchard. One listener will tell you 

 that it is only a little screech-owl's voice, another 

 that it is the raccoon's rallying-cry to a raid on the 

 cornfield. There is endless disputation concerning 

 it, and apparently no certainty, but the raccoon is 

 wilder than the owl, and it is his voice that you hear. 



" The corn is in the milk ; the beast is ready. 

 The father and mother and well-grown children, 

 born and reared in the cavern of a ledge or hollow 

 tree of a swamp, are hungry for sweets remem- 

 bered or yet untasted, and they are gathering to 

 it, stealing out of the thick darkness of the woods 

 and along the brookside in single file, never stop- 

 ping to dig a fiery wake-robin bulb, nor to catch a 

 frog, nor to harry a late brood of ground-nesting 

 birds, but only to call some laggard, or distant 



