THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 



349 



must be taken by pain and violence. The whole cre- 

 ation seems to be preying upon itself. Tragedy is the 

 present law of growth, even of life. The very words 

 themselves — hawks, owls, weasels, skunks, wolves, 

 dogs, panthers, etc. — bring up a host of bloody images 

 and murders. You have simply to watch the barnyard 

 fowls in their excursions about the farm to see tragedy 

 on a large scale among the insects and reptiles. Nor 

 does it stop simply with one instance. The weasel sucks 

 the blood of the chicken, the hen gobbles down a grass- 

 hopper or a frog, and so on, so far as I know, ad in- 

 finituin. Savagery has apparently been very contagious. 



I have often disturbed mice in shocks of fodder or 

 in wood-piles. Farmers frequently plow up young rab- 

 bits and mice and moles, and find nests of quails' eggs 

 or those of prairie chickens when mowing. Cattle are 

 continually trampling down nests when brushing 

 through briars and bushes. I am constantly reminded 

 of Burns's poems "To a Mouse" and "To a Mountain 

 Daisy." Readers of Thomas Hardy will remember his 

 touching description, in "Jude the Obscure," of the 

 wounded rabbit crying in the snare. Burns, again, 

 reveals his sympathetic nature in his poem "On Seeing 

 a Wounded Hare Limp by Me." Sometimes a snake 

 is cut all to pieces on the meadow, and I have seen a 

 dog who, in the exhilaration and joy of life in the fields 

 and grass, had bounded in front of the mower and had 

 his legs cut off and mangled. We had to kill him 

 afterwards, and it seemed as if he understood what the 

 old rifle was for, from the look in his eyes. 



I remember once finding a little puppy which had 

 been lost in the woods. I had heard his cries, and had 



