My Neighbor's Wood-Shed 213 



observers in any other than a degraded sense. 

 They can dig out a woodchuck or cut down 

 a tree to catch the coon in its branches, and 

 they judge of game by but two expressions, 

 " lean as a snake" and " fat as a hog." 

 When their prey is the former their disap- 

 pointment gives way to cruelty ; when the 

 latter, the animality of gluttony obliterates 

 all else. The good Quaker farmers all 

 dead now who used to own all these lands 

 said of these men, whom they hired at very 

 low wages, ' They are men and brothers ;" 

 but I noticed that every Quaker of them all 

 struggled quite ineffectually to conceal his 

 disgust at the thought of such relationship. 

 The phrase fell very glibly from their lips 

 when they spoke in meeting, but not a word 

 of it came from a greater depth than the 

 mouth. But this bold assumption of sin- 

 cerity is common everywhere. It was no 

 peculiarity of this commonplace corner. 

 Words that have much sound and have at 

 times been weighty with significance rattle 

 now like pebbles between our teeth, are 

 spoken as mechanically as our breathing is 

 involuntary. As everywhere else, so here 

 at Thee-thou cross-roads, an earnest man has 



