are welcome. They have rights as well as I; and after these years of 
farming wherein losses have much outranked my gains, so much so that 
long since | have ceased to keep accounts because | felt so sad and dis- 
appointed when I looked at my balance sheet. After these years, I say, 
I like these marauders. Were they absent, | might raise more (I can 
not say), but I would enjoy less. I am a hedonist when on my farm. 
I love to hear the quail’s call on a summer afternoon when evening is not 
far away. His note is so clear, so liquid clear, and his cheer is like peren- 
nial joy, and when you can give him a playground and house and garden 
patch in your field for so little cost, and for such cheerful piping, I, for one, 
love him for a tenant. And the rabbits, with their strange timorous- 
ness, that seem to dwell in perpetual fear, yet have delight through all 
their troubles, I love them. To 
see a rabbit sprawling like a 
pickaninny in the sun, is to see 
a life-size picture of content- 
ment and grace; and in the 
summer, when the dogs seem 
to have their teeth pulled, the 
rabbit will calm his fear for a 
moment to look at your com- 
ing, and the rabbit child—no 
bigger than a country biscuit— 
is so cute as to make me always 
call him by some pet diminu- 
tive as 1 do my baby. And 
when they hie them to the thicket where the briers are rabbit barri- 
cades, their scurry away is like dim laughter, and I like them for 
tenants too. They may stay without gruff talk from me. | am for the 
rights of the world. The crow—nothing would induce me to part from 
him. Frankly, I love him, though to the best of my belief, he does not 
return my affection. I love him and am glad | have woods where he 
nests in summer, and where he spends his nights in winter with his 
dusky wings close against his dusky sides and his sagacious eyes asleep. 
He may do harm, but | doubt it; he does more good than harm. He 
is friend to the farmer, but we farrners do not always know our friends ; 
but, friend or foe, I like him. His dudish and impertinent walk, his dis- 
inclination to have anything to do with me, his stay with us all winter 
when other birds are mostly gone leaving us alone, his remarks which 
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