14 INDOOR STTTDIES 



your horse forgot that he was not a mustang on 

 the plains, and took the bit in his teeth, and left 

 your buggy and family behind high and dry, etc., 

 was eagerly snapped up by him. Ah, you have not 

 tamed them, you have not broken them yet ! He 

 makes a most charming entry in his journal about 

 a little boy he one day saw in the street, with a 

 home-made cap on his head made of a woodchuck's 

 skin. He seized upon it as a horse with the crib- 

 bite seizes upon a post. It tasted good to him. 



"The great gray-tipped hairs were all preserved, 

 and stood out above the brown ones, only a little 

 more loosely than in life. It was as if he had put 

 his head into the belly of a woodchuok, having cut 

 off his tail and legs, and substituted a visor for the 

 head. The little fellow wore it innocently enough, 

 not knowing what he had on forsooth, going about 

 his small business pit-a-pat, and his black eyes 

 sparkled beneath it when I remarked on its warmth, 

 even as the woodchuck's might have done. Such 

 should be the history of every piece of clothing that 

 we wear." 



He says how rarely are we encouraged by the 

 sight of simple actions in the street; but when one 

 day he saw an Irishman wheeling home from far a 

 large, damp, and rotten pine log for fuel, he felt 

 encouraged. That looked like fuel; it waxmed him 

 to think of it. The piles of solid oak-wood which 

 he saw in other yards did not interest him at all in 

 comparison. It savored of the wild, and, though 

 water-soaked, his fancy kindled at the sight. 



