SUCKER DAYS. 



""HE shytepokes dangled their loose 

 JL legs doubtingly before settling 

 down to a wobbly perch among the red- 

 budding tops of the soft maple saplings, 

 but after many balancings and upstretch- 

 ing of necks they could finally look 

 down through the white sumacs and 

 choose a safe alighting place in the mucky, 

 trembling swamp where we boys never 

 could go. It was not a large swamp ; in 

 fact, it would not strain any one very much 

 to heave a stone half way across it now- 

 adays, but at the time I have in mind it 

 was a great sphagnum-lined mystery of a 

 place, and it seemed to us youngsters that 

 the other side was way, way over there. 

 The boulders in the rough pastures round 

 about it were partly hidden with chaplets 

 of huckleberry bushes and sweet fern, 

 78 



