My Boyhood and Youth 



glass. Next he tried the sash and gnawed the 

 wood off level with the glass; then father hap- 

 pened to come upstairs and discovered the 

 mischief that was being done to his seed corn 

 and window and immediately ordered him out 

 of the house. 



The flying squirrel was one of the most inter- 

 esting of the little animals we found in the 

 woods, a beautiful brown creature, with fine 

 eyes and smooth, soft fur like that of a mole or 

 field mouse. He is about half as long as the 

 gray squirrel, but his wide-spread tail and the 

 folds of skin along his sides that form the wings 

 make him look broad and flat, something like a 

 kite. In the evenings our cat often brought 

 them to her kittens at the shanty, and later 

 we saw them fly during the day from the trees 

 we were chopping. They jumped and glided 

 off smoothly and apparently without effort, like 

 birds, as soon as they heard and felt the break- 

 ing shock of the strained fibres at the stump, 

 when the trees they were in began to totter and 

 groan. They can fly, or rather glide, twenty or 

 I 192 ] 



