A BARN-DOOR OUTLOOK 



of another on the stone wall; both are apparently 

 going at the top of their speed. They make a red 

 streak over the dark-gray stones. When the pursuer 

 seems to overtake the pursued and becomes "It," 

 the race is reversed, and away they go on the back 

 track with the same fleetness of the hunter and the 

 hunted, till things are reversed again. I have seen 

 them engaged in the same game in tree-tops, each 

 one having his innings by turn. 



The gray squirrel comes and goes, but the red 

 squirrel we have always with us. He will live where 

 the gray will starve. He is a true American; he has 

 nearly all the national traits — nervous energy, 

 quickness, resourcefulness, pertness, not to say im- 

 pudence and conceit. He is not altogether lovely or 

 blameless. He makes war on the chipmunk, he is a 

 robber of birds' nests, and is destructive of the or- 

 chard fruits. Nearly every man's hand is against 

 him, yet he thrives, and long may he continue to 

 do so! 



One day I placed some over-ripe plums on the wall 

 in front of me to see what he would do with them. At 

 first he fell eagerly to releasing the pit, and then to 

 cutting his way to the kernel in the pit. After one of 

 them had been disposed of in this way, he proceeded 

 to carry o£E the others and place them here and there 

 amid the branches of a plum-tree from which he had 

 stolen every plum long before they were ripe. A day 

 or two later I noted that they had all been removed 

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