The Wit of the Wild 



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" I lay there all straight out, as if I was a 

 corpse at a foine wake, wid me hands folded 

 proper, awaitin' to die, and wanst in a while the 

 young wans 'd come in and say : ' Are ye dead 

 yit, mamma? ' 'nd I'd say: ' Not yit.' And- 

 wad ye believe it? I lay there more'n two 

 hours, composin' meself and praying to the Vir- 

 gin, and I niver died wanst! Then I said to 

 meself : ' It's an ould fool you are, Mrs. Mur- 

 phy,' and I got up." 



But all this information as to the manners 

 and customs of this lurking danger of the north- 

 ern woods was gained long after the occurrence 

 which I started out to tell much more briefly 

 namely, how we verified Helen's assertion that 

 she knew a copperhead when she saw it; and, 

 secondarily, how we lost faith in a theory. The 

 theory was that this is a dry-land snake exclu- 

 sively. Compared with its cousin, the black 

 water moccasin, it is; and down South they 

 distinguish it as the upland moccasin, and look 

 out for it in the cottonfields where it hunts 

 for mice. But in our region we learned that 

 the tribe regularly migrates from the stony 

 *>$ 96 



