WILD PASTURES 



formance, for every one of them is ca- 

 pable of being an end man or interlocutor 

 or soloist as the case may require. 



Already the audience is beginning to 

 gather. First conies a gray squirrel 

 scratching down a maple trunk, his 

 strong clawed hind feet digging into the 

 bark and holding him wherever he wishes 

 them to, as if he were an inverted line- 

 man. Suddenly he sights the canoe and 

 its occupant and blows up. Nothing 

 else will express his sudden outpouring 

 of scolding and denunciation of this 

 creature that has usurped a front seat. 

 The sounds burst out of him like the 

 escaping steam from a great mogul en- 

 gine waiting on a siding for its freight, 

 and he quivers from head to foot, like 

 the engine, with the intensity of the 

 ebullition. Suddenly there is a " quawk! " 

 directly over his head, a single cry shot 

 62 



