wood-chuck, a marmot and a strategist, makes his burrow in the middle of a field, where he must see you ere you see him.  Now and again a dog manages to cut him off his base, and the battle is worth crossing fields to watch.  But the woodchuck turned in long ago, and will not be out till April.  The coon lives—­well, no one seems to know particularly where Brer Coon lives, but when the Hunter’s Moon is large and full he descends into the corn-lands, and men chase him with dogs for his fur, which makes the finest kind of overcoat, and his flesh, which tastes like chicken.  He cries at night sorrowfully as though a child were lost.

They seem to kill, for one reason or other, everything that moves in this land.  Hawks, of course; eagles for their rarity; foxes for their pelts; red-shouldered blackbirds and Baltimore orioles because they are pretty, and the other small things for sport—­French fashion.  You can get a rifle of a kind for twelve shillings, and if your neighbour be fool enough to post notices forbidding ‘hunting’ and fishing, you naturally seek his woods.  So the country is very silent and unalive.

There are, however, bears within a few miles, as you will see from this notice, picked up at the local tobacconist’s: 

  JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN!  BEAR HUNT!

As bears are too numerous in the town of Peltyville Corners, Vt., the hunters of the surrounding towns are invited to participate in a grand hunt to be held on Blue Mountains in the town of Peltyville Corners, Vt., Wednesday, Nov. 8th, if pleasant.  If not, first fine day.  Come one, come all!

They went, but it was the bear that would not participate.  The notice was printed at somebody’s Electric Print Establishment.  Queer mixture, isn’t it?

The bear does not run large as a rule, but he has a weakness for swine and calves which brings punishment.  Twelve hours’ rail and a little marching take you up to the moose-country; and twenty-odd miles from here as the crow flies you come to virgin timber, where trappers live, and where there is a Lost Pond that many have found once but can never find again.

Men, who are of one blood with sheep, have followed their friends and the railway along the river valleys where the towns are.  Across the hills the inhabitants are few, and, outside their State, little known.  They withdraw from society in November if they live on the uplands, coming down in May as the snow gives leave.  Not much more than a generation ago these farms made their own clothes, soap, and candles, and killed their own meat thrice a year, beef, veal, and pig, and sat still between-times.  Now they buy shop-made clothes, patent soaps, and kerosene; and it is among their tents that the huge red and gilt Biographies of Presidents, and the twenty-pound family Bibles, with illuminated marriage-registers, mourning-cards, baptismal certificates, and hundreds of genuine steel-engravings, sell best.  Here, too, off the main-travelled