A SHARP LOOKOUT 15 



pared to pass the winter, with only a coverlid of 

 wet matted leaves between it and zero weather. 

 Forthwith I set up as a prophet of warm weather, 

 and among other things predicted a failure of the 

 ice crop on the river; which, indeed, others, who 

 had not heard frogs croak on the 31st of December, 

 had also begun to predict. Surely, I thought, this 

 frog knows what it is about; here is the wisdom of 

 nature; it would have gone deeper into the ground 

 than that if a severe winter was approaching; so I 

 was not anxious about my coal-bin, nor disturbed 

 by longings for Florida. But what a winter fol- 

 lowed, the winter of 1885, when the Hudson be- 

 came coated with ice nearly two feet thick, and 

 when March was as cold as January ! I thought of 

 my frog under the hemlock and wondered how it 

 was faring. So one day the latter part of March, 

 when the snow was gone, and there was a feeling 

 of spring in the air, I turned aside in my walk to 

 investigate it. The matted leaves were still frozen 

 hard, but I succeeded in lifting them up and expos- 

 ing the frog. There it sat as fresh and unscathed 

 as in the fall. The ground beneath and all about 

 it was still frozen like a rock, but apparently it had 

 some means of its own of resisting the frost. It 

 winked and bowed its head when I touched it, but 

 did not seem inclined to leave its retreat. Some 

 days later, after the frost was nearly all out of the 

 ground, I passed that way, and found my frog had 

 come out of its seclusion and was resting amid the 

 dry leaves. There was not much jump in it yet, 



