44 NEW HAMPSHIRE 



for example, the poison-bottle went with me ; 

 and the looker-on, had there been one, — as 

 luckily there was n't, — might have seen me on 

 my knees, with hands outstretched over the 

 water, struggling to snatch from the surface 

 a poor, imhappy " skater," or a " lucky-bug " 

 (it really was lucky, for it got away while the 

 skater perished), as a possible prize for my 

 lady's cork-lined box. On all my jaunts down 

 the carriage-road (and they were many, longer 

 or shorter, that route offering the readiest means 

 of escape from the frequent summit-capping 

 cloud) the same scientific vial was my compan- 

 ion. If a grasshopper jumped (not the common 

 one with banded legs, of which I saw a super- 

 fluity, but a handsome, rare-looking green. fellow, 

 making me think of Leigh Hunt's " green little 

 vaulter in the sunny grass"), I stole murder- 

 ously after him, and with a reckless clutch at 

 the stunted bush on which he had settled I 

 gathered him in and put him to sleep. (This 

 was well done, for he was really of a wingless 

 Alpine species, and only my employer's third 

 specimen of his kind.) I£ a " daddy-long-legs," 

 prayerless friend of my childhood, crawled 

 across the way, he, too, hapless creature, with 

 legs so superfluously numerous and elongated 

 that he could not hurry, even to save his life. 



