Part 25 (2/2)
The black squirrel delights in the new-fallen snow like a boy--a real boy, with red hands as well as red cheeks, and an autos except rest The first snow sends a thrill of joy through every fibre of such a boy, and a thousand delights crowd into hiscoasters on the hills, the passing sleighs with niches on the runners for his feet, the flying soballs, the sliding-places, the broad, tehtful panorama, and he hurries out to catch the elusive flakes in his outstretched hands and to shout aloud in the gladness of his heart And the black squirrel becomes a boy with the first snow What a pity he cannot shout! There is a superabundant joy and life in his long, graceful bounds, when his beautiful fornified to twice its real size Perhaps there is vanity as well as joy in his lithe, boundingthe naked trees, for nature see that would best display his graces of forht, airy masses on the spruces and pines, and festoons the naked tracery and clustering winter buds of theand branch and clinging mass of snow in a solid medium of crystal, the spell of stillness is broken by the silent but joyful leaps of the hurrying squirrel How alive he seems, in contrast with the silence of the snow, as his outlines contrast with its perfect white! His body curves and elongates with regular undulations, as he measures off the snoith twin footprints Away in the distance he is still visible a patch of aniular footprints are all about, shohere he has run hither and thither, with no apparent purpose except to manifest his joy in life
His red-haired cousin co in a hollow tree and looks out with an expression of disappointment on his face He does not like the snow-covered landscape spread out so artistically before hiy to scold an intruder, as he would in the co will tenition than a silent look of weary discontent Another cousin, the chiper displays his daintily-striped coat Oblivious in his burrow, he is sleeping away the days, and waiting for athe branches of an elid attitude to another, electrified by the crisp at over the white surface to claer limbs he disappears As he never atte to partake of the store laid by in the season of plenty Hickory nuts are his favourite food, and the hard shells seeality, and gathers the down the shrivelled and unfilled, that the boys may not annoy him with stones and sticks In winter he is the happiest of all the woodland fa influence of the cold, nor to the depression of a season of scanty fare, but bounds along from tree to tree, inspired by the subtle spirit of winter and revelling in the joy of being alive
S T WOOD
THE SQUIRREL
Drawn froe or injury has hollow'd deep, Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves, He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk a while, and bask in the warm sun, The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play
He seesbeech; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stan'd alarnificantly fierce
COWPER
SOLDIER, REST
”Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er, Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking; Drea
In our isle's enchanted hall, Hands unseen thy couch are strewing, Fairy strains of
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er, Drea fields no , Morn of toil, nor night of waking
”No rude sound shall reach thine ear, Ar, Tru clan, or squadron tra
Yet the lark's shrill fife may come At the daybreak fro froy shallow
Ruder sounds shall none be near, Guards nor warders challenge here, Here's no war-steed's neigh and cha”
SCOTT: ”The Lady of the Lake”
FIshi+NG
One fine Thursday afternoon, To borrowed East's new rod, started by himself to the river He fished for some time with small success, not a fish would rise to hi the bank, he was presently aware ofin a pool on the opposite side, under the shade of a huge -tree The stream was deep here, but some fifty yards beloas a shallow, for which helandlords, keepers, sole else, pulled up his trousers, plunged across, and in threeon all fours towards the clureat chub, or any other coarse fish, are in earnest about anything; but just then they were thoroughly bent on feeding, and in half an hour Master ToiantAs he was baiting for a fourth pounder, and just going to throw in again, he beca up the bank not one hundred yards off Another look told him that it was the under-keeper Could he reach the shallow before hi for it but the tree So To up as fast as he could and dragging up his rod after hie branch some ten feet up, which stretched out over the river, when the keeper arrived at the clump
Tom's heart beat fast as he came under the tree; two steps more and he would have passed, when, as ill-luck would have it, the gleaht his eye, and he made a dead point at the foot of the tree He picked up the fish one by one; his eye and touch told hi within the hour
To the branch, and heard the keeper beating the cluan gently shi+fting it to get it alongside of hiht hickory shoots twelve feet long, with no leaves, worse luck” Alas! the keeper catches the rustle, and then a sight of the rod, and then of Tom's hand and ar under the tree ”Now you come down this minute”