My Boyhood and Youth 



in hairs of their own nests and die. Once I 

 found a poor snipe in our meadow that was 

 unable to fly on account of difficult egg-birth. 

 Pitying the poor mother, I picked her up out 

 of the grass and helped her as gently as I could, 

 and as soon as the egg was born she flew gladly 

 away. Oftentimes I have thought it strange 

 that one could walk through the woods and 

 mountains and plains for years without see- 

 ing a single blood-spot. Most wild animals 

 get into the world and out of it without being 

 noticed. Nevertheless we at last sadly learn 

 that they are all subject to the vicissitudes of 

 fortune like ourselves. Many birds lose their 

 lives in storms. I remember a particularly 

 severe Wisconsin winter, when the temperature 

 was many degrees below zero and the snow was 

 deep, preventing the quail, which feed on the 

 ground, from getting anything like enough of 

 food, as was pitifully shown by a flock I found 

 on our farm frozen solid in a thicket of oak 

 sprouts. They were in a circle about a foot 

 wide, with their heads outward, packed close 

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