THE WOODCHUCK 



the gathering of the harvests and the 

 ripening of fruits, and possibly the gor- 

 geousness of autumn melting into sombre 

 gray. He had heard all the glad songs 

 of all the birds and the sad notes of fare- 

 well of bobolink and plover to their sum- 

 mer home ; he had seen the swallows 

 depart and had heard the droning of the 

 bumblebee among the earliest and latest 

 of his own clover blossoms. All the 

 best the world had to give in the round 

 of her seasons, luxuriant growth to feed 

 upon, warm sunshine to bask in, he had 

 enjoyed; of her worst, he would have none. 

 So he bade farewell to the gathering 

 desolation of the tawny fields and crept 

 closer to the earth's warm heart to sleep 

 through the long night of winter, till the 

 morning of spring. The wild scurry of 

 wind-tossed leaves swept above him un- 

 heard, and the pitiless beat of autumnal 

 rain and the raging of winter storms that 

 heaped the drifts deeper and deeper over 

 his forsaken door. The bitterness of 

 cold, that made the furred fox and the 

 muffled owl shiver, never touched him 

 in his warm nest. So he shirked the 

 hardships of winter without the toil of a 

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