How Animals Talk 



I have been in the wilderness alone, I have ex- 

 perienced the same impression of being watched 

 or followed, and so often has it proved a true 

 warning that I still trust it and act upon it, even 

 when my eyes see nothing unusual and my ears 

 hear nothing but their own ringing in the silence. 



I remember once, when I was sitting on the 

 shore of a lake at twilight, that I began to have 

 an increasing impression that some living thing 

 unseen was near me. At first I neglected it, for 

 I had my eyes on a deer that interested me greatly; 

 but the feeling grew stronger till I obeyed it and 

 rose to my feet. At the first motion came a 

 startling woof! and from some bushes close behind 

 me a bear jumped away for the woods. No doubt 

 he had been there some time, watching me or 

 creeping nearer, knowing that I was alive, but 

 completely puzzled by my shapelessness and lack 

 of action. A similar thing has happened several 

 times, in other places and with other animals, and 

 always at a moment when I was most in harmony 

 with the environment and a sharer of its deep 

 tranquillity. 1 



As a child this faculty (if such it be) was as 

 natural as anything else in life; for in childhood 

 we take the world as we find it in personal ex- 

 perience, and nothing is especially wonderful 



1 For further example and analysis of the matter, see pp. 196-199. 



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