How Animals Talk 



what you do is none of their business, they are all 

 the more interested in you and your doings; you 

 come to them with all the charm of the unknown, 

 the unexpected ; and they will gratify their curios- 

 ity, fearlessly and most pleasantly, so long as you 

 know how to stimulate or play upon it and to 

 hold still while enjoying it. 



All that is natural enough, as natural as life; 

 but it is not written in any book of natural history, 

 and it came to me that day as a wonderful dis- 

 covery. It suggested at once the right way to 

 study birds or beasts, as living creatures; it has 

 since led to many a fascinating glimpse of the 

 wood-folk comedy, and to a lifelong pleasure which 

 is too elusive to be set down in words. At the 

 bottom of it, I suppose, is the fact that in every 

 wild or natural creature is something, at once 

 mysterious and familiar, which appeals power- 

 fully to your interest or sympathy, as if you saw 

 a faint shadow of your other self, or caught a 

 fleeting memory of that vanished time when you 

 lived in a child's world of wonder and delight. 



From the beginning, therefore, I met all birds 

 and animals in a child's impersonal way; which, 

 strangely enough, ascribes personality to every 

 living thing, yes, and honors it. These inquisitive 

 little rangers of the wood or the berry-pasture, 

 shy and exquisitely alert, were all individuals like 



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