EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 25 
are got out, and his sphere is already hooped. 
What’s the use of talking to him ? When you 
spoke of sphere music, he thought only of a 
thumping on his cask. If he does not know 
something that nobody else does, that nobody 
told him, then he’s a tell-tale. 
February 28, 1860. Passed a very little boy 
in the street to-day who had on a home-made 
cap of a woodchuck’s skin, which his father or 
older brother had killed and cured, and his 
mother or older sister had fashioned into a nice 
warm cap. I was interested by the sight of it, 
it suggested so much of family history, adven¬ 
ture with the animal, story told about it, not 
without exaggeration, the human parents, care 
of their young these hard times. Johnny had 
been promised a cap many times, and now the 
work was completed. A perfect little Idyl, as 
they say. The cap was large and round, big 
enough, you would say, for the boy’s father, and 
had some kind of cloth visor stitched to it. 
The top of the cap was evidently the back of 
the woodchuck, as it were, expanded in breadth, 
contracted in length, and it was as fresh and 
handsome as if the woodchuck wore it himself. 
The great gray-tipped hairs were all preserved 
and stood out above the brown ones, only a lit¬ 
tle more loosely than in life. As if he had put 
his head into the belly of a woodchuck, having 
