NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS 117 



preparations, while chapter ix follows, showing how the foresight 

 and care obtain even among the plants and trees. The two chapters 

 together should give the pupils a glad thought for winter, should 

 utterly change their conventional language and feeling for it as a 

 time of death. And instead of lamenting the season as a necessary 

 evil, you must show them that it is to be welcomed as a period of sleep 

 for nature from which she will waken in all the freshness of a spring- 

 time such as is nowhere to be had outside of the temperate zone. 

 " It is not always May," wails the poet ; but ask them : Who wants 

 it always May ? We want the variety, the contrasts of our four 

 seasons, and as to winter, let the North Wind blow at will, redden 

 our cheeks, quicken our step, put purpose into our wills and — it 

 won't starve us; for we, too, like the muskrat, are provided for. 



FOE THE PUPIL 



If there is a muskrat house or village of houses in your neighbor- 

 hood, report to the class, or better, take teacher and class, as soon as 

 freezing weather comes, to see it. Go out yourselves and try to see 

 the muskrats plastering their walls on one of the bright October 

 nights. 

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muskrats combine : The author has frequently found as many as 



six rats in a single house ; but whether all of these helped in the 



building or not, he is unable to say. 



winter house : If the house is undisturbed (as when situated out 



in a stumpy pond) it will stand for years, the rats dwelling in it 



the year around. 

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pick and shovel : What is meant by a fox's " pick and shovel " ? 



Lupton's Pond : the name of a little wood-walled pond that the 



author haunted as a boy. 



" The beat-laid schemes o' mice and men 

 Gang aft agley." 



Learn this poem (" To A Mouse ") by heart. Burns is the author. 

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very much alike : Name some other respects in which animals and 

 men are alike in their lives. What famous line in the poem just 

 quoted is it that makes men and mice very closely related ? 



