How Animals Talk 



many unspoiled Indians, whom we regard from a 

 distance as being mysteriously alike, but who have 

 different traditions, ideals, personalities, and even 

 different languages. 



I know not what the spell of any lonely place 

 may be when you make yourself part of it ; I only 

 know that it stirs one strangely, like the flute note 

 of a wood-thrush or a song without words. Though 

 I never met with an adventure on my little pond, 

 never cast a fly to learn whether any trout lurked 

 in its waters, never thought of firing a shot at its 

 abundant game, yet season after season I returned 

 to it expectantly, and went away satisfied. Such 

 a pond has a charm of its own, a spell which our 

 forebears sought to express in terms of nymphs 

 or puckwudgies or water-sprites. It grows a better 

 crop than trout, attracts a finer game than deer or 

 water-fowl, and you can seldom visit it without 

 learning something new about your natural self 

 or the wood folk or the friendly universe. 



Thus, it happens on a day when you are waiting 

 beside your pond, or wending your way to it, that 

 a moose or a fox or a dainty grouse appears un- 

 expectedly near you; and instantly, without 

 thought or motive, you "freeze" in your tracks or, 

 if you are not seen, shrink deeper into the shadow 

 for concealment. The action is natural, invol- 

 untary, instinctive, precisely like the action of a 



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