OUR COUNTRY NEIGHBORS. 8 1 



air, and of all sorts of ferns and wild-flowers and creeping 

 vines on the ground. All these had to be cleared out, 

 and a dozen great trees cut down and dragged off to a 

 neighboring saw-mill, there to be transformed into boards 

 to finish off our house. Then, fetching a great machine, 

 such as might be used to pull a giant's teeth, with ropes, 

 pulleys, oxen, and men, and might and main, we pulled out 

 the stumps, with their great prongs and their network of 

 roots and fibres ; and then, alas ! we had to begin with all 

 the pretty wild, lovely bushes, and the checkerberries and 

 ferns and wild blackberries and huckleberry-bushes, and dig 

 them up remorselessly, that we might plant our corn and 

 squashes. And so we got a house and a garden right out 

 of the heart of our piece of wild wood, about a mile from 

 the city of H . 



Well, then, people said it was a lonely place, and far 

 from neighbors, by which they meant that it was a good 

 way for them to come to see us. But we soon found that 

 whoever goes into the woods to live finds neighbors of a 

 new kind, and some to whom it is rather hard to become 

 accustomed. 



For instance, on a fine day early in April, as we were 

 crossing over to superintend the building of our house, we 

 were startled by a striped snake, with his little bright eyes, 

 raising himself to look at us, and putting out his red, 

 forked tongue. Now there is no more harm in these little 

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