The Kangaroo Rat 



ful? I would gladly have believed. Christian 

 Andersen would have insisted on believing in 

 it, and then made others believe it, too. But for 

 me, alas! it was impossible, for long ago, when 

 my soul came to the fork in the trail marked 

 on the left "To Arcadie," on the right "To 

 Scientia," I took the flinty, upland right-hand 

 path. I had given up my fayland eyes for — for 

 I do not know what. And so I was puzzled, 

 but the more puzzled, the more interested, of 

 course; and remembering, from former ex- 

 perience, that it pays to offer a great deal of 

 clear writing-space to the visitors who nightly 

 favored me with their autographs, I made with 

 unusual care a large extension of the clean- 

 swept dust sheet, to which the sage-brush-scented 

 evening wind added a still smoother finish, and 

 which next day enabled me to follow out a 

 single line of the point-lace pattern. 



It went dimpling down the path, toward 

 the six old corn-stumps called the garden, and 

 then, leaving the clear written dust, it had 

 turned aside, and seemed to end at a weed- 

 covered mound, about which were several small 

 holes that went in, not downward, but at a level. 



239 



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