188 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



jump; and then the rabbit jumps and goes 

 scuttling away in a panic of wild alarm, and 

 then the short hair at the back of your neck 

 gets that cold, crawly feeling and you're 

 scared. You needn't tell me you're not, be- 

 cause I know better. It's all the same if it 

 happens to be a baby-sized gray owl that sets 

 up a sudden mocking, elfish chuttering on a 

 low branch close overhead you're scared. 

 I've been scared badly enough to make my 

 heart skip a couple of beats when a fat old toad 

 that was squatted in the middle of the trail 

 bounced up from between my feet and plopped 

 off into the weeds. It's not a nice feeling; it 

 makes a man ashamed of himself when he 

 thinks about it; but being ashamed won't stop 

 it. That takes time; time enough to get over 

 being an alien. 



The same feeling not of fear, but of 

 strangeness crept into our relations with our 

 soil in the earlier years. I dare say every 

 townsman who takes to farming goes at his 

 work with a firmly fixed notion that he's going 

 out to meet Goliath in combat that he's pit- 

 ting his intelligence against some rude, primal 

 force in Nature that's opposed to him and that 

 will overpower him if it can. 



