, would never do any hard work for pay, it 

 gave him cricks in his back, he said, but 

 would cheerfully half kill himself to go fish- 

 ing through the ice, or to oblige a neigh- 

 bor. So far as he earned a living he did it 

 by shooting and fishing and trapping and 

 picking berries in their several seasons, and 

 by gathering dandelions and cowslips (kew- 

 slops he called them) in the spring and 

 peddling them good-naturedly from door to 

 door. Most of his time in pleasant weather 

 he spent in roaming about the woods, or 

 lying on his back by the pond shore where 

 the woods were thickest, fishing lazily and 

 catching fish where no one else could ever 

 get them, or watching an otter's den on a 

 stream where no one else had seen an otter 

 for forty years. He knew all about the woods, 

 knew every bird and beast and plant, and one 

 boy at least, to my knowledge, would rather 

 go with him for a day's fishing than see the 

 president's train or go to a circus. 

 Unlike the others, Natty did 

 not laugh at my description, but 

 listened patiently and told me I 



