SPRING . 97 



him, as I like the crow. Health and long 

 life to both of them, wildings that will 

 not be put down nor driven into the outer 

 wilderness, be the hand of civilization never 

 so hostile. They were here before man 

 came, and will be here, it is most likely, 

 after he is gone ; unless, as the old planet's 

 fires go out, man himself becomes a hiberna- 

 tor. I have heard a hunted woodchuck, at 

 bay in a stone wall, gnashing his teeth 

 against a dog; and I have seen a mother 

 woodchuck with a litter of young ones play- 

 ing about her as she lay at full length sun- 

 ning herself, the very picture of maternal 

 satisfaction : and my belief is that wood- 

 chucks have as honest a right as most of us 

 to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

 As I walked under the willows, empty 

 to-day, though I remembered more than one 

 happy occasion when, in better company, 

 I had found them alive with wings, I 

 paused to look through the branches at a 

 large hawk and a few glossy-backed barn 

 swallows quartering over the meadow. 

 Then, all at once, there fell on my ears a 

 shower of bobolink notes, and the birds, 



