THe Lay of the Band 
don’t haggle with Nature after that fashion, The 
farm is not a marketplace where you get exactly 
what you pay for. You must spend on the farm all 
you have of time and strength and brains; but you 
must not expect merely your money’s worth. Infi- 
nitely more than that, and oftentimes less. Farm- 
ing is like virtue, —its own reward. It pays the man 
who loves it, no matter how short the oats and corn. 
So it is with chipmunk. Perhaps his books don’t 
balance, — a few June-bugs short on the credit side. 
What then? It isn’t mere bugs and berries, as I have 
just suggested, but stone piles. What is the’ differ- 
ence in value to me between a stone pile with and 
without a chipmunk in it? Just the difference, rela- 
tively speaking, between the house with or without 
my four boys in it. 
Chipmunk, with his sleek, round form, his rich 
color and his stripes, is the daintiest, most beautiful 
of all our squirrels. He is one of the friendliest of my 
tenants, too, friendlier even than chickadee. The two 
are very much alike in spirit, but however tame and 
confiding chickadee may become, he is still a bird, 
and, despite his wings, belongs to a different and a 
lower order of beings. Chickadee is often curious 
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