264 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 
ancient tree; or even take possession of a cavity 
in the stone wall that the farmer has thoughtfully 
provided. The Yankee calls this laziness. Here 
again the woodchuck protests that such a view is 
calumnious and unphilosophical. He declares that 
it is a wicked waste of time and energy to do any- 
thing avoidable not in the direct line of happiness, 
which, as every one knows, consists in gambolling 
among odorous herbage, swinging in the top of a 
bush, climbing trees, —a method of seeing the world 
every whit as good as laborious travel, — soaking 
for hours in the sunshine, strolling in the moon- 
light, and contemplating one’s increase of fat- 
ness as autumn approaches. Why work when 
one may play? Why play when one may loaf? 
Why loaf when one may sleep? And the ’chuck 
further complains of the impropriety of harsh 
criticism from men who boast of their labor-saving 
machines, which, in his opinion, are labor-making, 
since they exist in order that two men shall work— 
but differently —where only one worked before. 
“ And yet,” he goes on, as he sits up with his 
gray old back leaning comfortably against a smooth 
boulder, and chatters at me, with a burr in his 
speech and clattering teeth that make his words 
difficult to understand at first, — 
“And yet they call it ‘labor-saving,’ and say 
that they are doing this ceaseless, prodigious 
struggling, in order to get a chance to rest and en- 
joy themselves, It’s too deep for a woodchuck ! 
