And the squirrel, I like him. I love his russet hilarity. I enjoy his 

 impudence, for at sight of me he orders me off the place. I have 

 the tax receipts. I have by the sweat of my face secured them ; but 

 no difference, he has the rights of squatter sovereignity, and bids me in 

 an unseemly and bossy fashion to quit the premises and leave the woods 

 to him. He is delicious in his effrontery as the nip of a winter wind. 

 He scurries across my winter leaves, zigzags up the trees, pauses not to 

 get breath, but to give me a piece of his mind, tosses himself from tree- 

 top to treetop, crows over me because I can not do it, sits and giggles 

 at me, " I dare you to do it ;" eats a nut he has stolen from me in my 

 presence, and eats it with the method of an epicure, tosses off squirrel 

 jokes at me, which I being only a man and a trifle slow do not see the fun 

 in until the next day, and throws them at me in a catarrhal voice (for 

 a squirrel always has a cold which affects his bronchial tubes), and 

 while taking another one of my walnuts from his pocket, he sails off 

 without the courtesy of an " Excuse me, please;" notwithstanding I like 

 him, and had 1 my way, no squirrel should ever be shot in my woods. 

 I would pension him to stay. 



But come, friend, and I will take you through my farm, or to speak 

 with greater accuracy in deference to my neighbors and critics, I will 

 take you up and down my farm, and you shall see for yourself what 

 riches I am master of. Come to the hilltop. This hill, to use the 

 phrase of our sweet friend, Alfred Tennyson, is " tiptilted like the petal 

 of a flower," which is poetry for the prose of pug-nosed. This hill has 

 considerable individuality, for which I praise it. There is no hill just like 

 it hereabouts, nor for that matter thereabouts wherever that is. I 

 want you to notice this view, actually it beats all. I have traveled 

 well, I will not boast, I simply say I have traveled let your imagina- 

 tion fill in the rest, lest I seem to be like those vain boasters who com- 

 pare everything they see with what they profess to have seen. How- 

 ever, resuggesting, "I have traveled" 

 and this hill just beats all and this view 

 is like the hill. This view is worth a gold x 



mine. Have you traveled far and seen 

 much ? Then, friend, look and tell me 

 in candor, have you seen more beauty 

 than here ? From this cliff you can see 

 many unhindered miles, where beauty 

 blooms profuse as lilacs in the spring. 



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