340 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



I do not count death in itself as the greatest of 

 evils; for death, as a necessary part of the life that 

 now is, and not a calamity, comes rather as a release, 

 even through the gateway of pain surely better than 

 perpetual suffering in its own time. And the various 

 and manifold incitements to rapine are, too, I suppose, 

 necessary in this our world the birds devouring the 

 insects, the owl clutching the little wood mouse, the 

 fox killing the duck, man hunting for game. It is a 

 law of life as now constituted (I do not say that it is 

 God's law) that we should live upon even our best 

 animal friends. So, says the old verse : 



"Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 

 For God hath made them so." 



Now I do not think that He did. Evil, that is, to 

 my mind, has not been a necessary, but a possible, 

 accompaniment of free will. It did not (and does not) 

 inhere in the very nature of things; but, having once 

 been chosen, its effects have so been transmitted into all 

 life that pain everywhere now is a recognized phase 

 of existence. 



But to particular and concrete cases of tragedy in 

 the fields. Mr. John Burroughs has an interesting 

 paper, entitled "The Tragedies of the Nests," in his 

 "Signs and Seasons," in which he gives several ex- 

 amples of the struggle for existence which the young 

 birds have to go through, and the necessity for constant 

 watchfulness on the part of the old birds against their 

 prowling or hooting enemies. Mrs. Olive Thorne 

 Miller and other writers on birds have also spoken of 

 the tragedies that frequently interrupt the peaceful 



