And the squirrel, I like him. I love his russet hilarity. I enjoy his 
impudence, for at sight of me he orders me off the place. I have 
the tax receipts. I have by the sweat of my face secured them; but 
no difference, he has the rights of squatter sovereignity, and bids me in 
an unseemly and bossy fashion to quit the premises and leave the woods 
to him. He is delicious in his effrontery as the nip of a winter wind. 
He scurries across my winter leaves, zigzags up the trees, pauses not to 
get breath, but to give me a piece of his mind, tosses himself from tree- 
top to treetop, crows over me because | can not do it, sits and giggles 
at me, ‘‘I dare you to do it;’’ eats a nut he has stolen from me in my 
presence, and eats it with the method of an epicure, tosses off squirrel 
jokes at me, which | being only a man and a trifle slow do not see the fun 
in until the next day, and throws them at me in a catarrhal voice (for 
a squirrel always has a cold which affects his bronchial tubes), and 
while taking another one of my walnuts from his pocket, he sails off 
without the courtesy of an ‘‘ Excuse me, please;’’ notwithstanding | like 
him, and had I my way, no squirrel should ever be shot in my woods. 
I would pension him to stay. 
But come, friend, and I will take you through my farm, or to speak 
with greater accuracy in deference to my neighbors and critics, | will 
take you up and down my farm, and you shall see for yourself what 
riches I am master of. Come to the hilltop. This hill, to use the 
phrase of our sweet friend, Alfred Tennyson, is ‘‘ tiptilted like the petal 
of a flower,’’ which is poetry for the prose of pug-nosed. This hill has 
considerable individuality, for which | praise it. There is no hill just like 
it hereabouts, nor for that matter thereabouts—wherever that is. I 
want you to notice this view, actually it beats all. 1 have traveled— 
well, I will not boast, I simply say I have traveled—let your imagina- 
tion fill in the rest, lest I seem to be like those vain boasters who com- 
pare everything they see with what they profess to have seen. How- 
ever, resuggesting, ‘‘I have traveled ’’— 
and this hill just beats all and this view 
is like the hill. This view is worth a gold 
mine. Have you traveled far and seen 
much? Then, friend, look and tell me 
in candor, have you seen more beauty 
than here? From this cliff you can see 
many unhindered miles, where beauty 
blooms profuse as lilacs in the spring. 
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