196 A LIFE OF FEAR 



as black as ebony, knows well the taste of his 

 flesh. I have known him to be caught by the 

 black snake and successfully swallowed. The 

 snake, no doubt, lay in ambush for him. 



This fear, this ever present source of danger 

 of the wild creatures, we know little about. 

 Probably the only person in the civilized coun- 

 tries who is no better off than the animals in 

 this respect is the Czar of Eussia. He would 

 not even dare gather nuts as openly as my 

 squirrel. A blacker and more terrible cat than 

 Nig would be lying in wait for him and would 

 make a meal of him. The early settlers in 

 this country must have experienced something of 

 this dread of apprehension from the Indians. 

 Many African tribes now live in the same state 

 of constant fear of the slave-catchers or of other 

 hostile tribes. Our ancestors, back in pre-his- 

 toric times, or back of that in geologic times, 

 must have known fear as a constant feeling. 

 Hence the prominence of fear in infants and 

 children when compared with the youth or the 

 grown person. Babies are nearly always afraid 

 of strangers. 



In the domestic animals also, fear is much 

 more active in the young than in the old. 

 Nearly every farm boy has seen a calf but a day 

 or two old, which its mother has secreted in the 

 woods or in a remote field, charge upon him fu- 

 riously with a wild bleat, when first discovered. 

 After this first ebullition of fear, it usually set- 

 tles down into the tame humdrum of its bovine 

 elders. 



