XII 
The Palace in the Pig-pen 
Ir is certainly a humble environment. The delicious 
spring of water, the plenty of wild, cool air, and the 
clean pavement of loose stones do not surround this 
home as they did the home of Mr. Burroughs’s 
pheebes, nor does this look “out upon some wild 
scene and overhung by beetling crags.” Instead, this 
phoebe’s nest is stuck close up to the low board roof 
in my pig-pen. 
“You have taken a handful of my wooded acres,” 
says Nature, “and if you have not improved them, 
you at least have changed them greatly. But they 
are mine still. Be friendly now, go softly, and you 
shall have them all, — and I shall have them all, too. 
We will share them together.” 
And we do. Every part of the fourteen acres is 
161 
