eloquently discoursing on the coming of the blessed peaceful, bloodless millennium!  Think of the passenger pigeons that fifty or sixty years ago filled the woods and sky over half the continent, now exterminated by beating down the young from the nests together with the brooding parents, before they could try their wonderful wings; by trapping them in nets, feeding them to hogs, etc.  None of our fellow mortals is safe who eats what we eat, who in any way interferes with our pleasures, or who may be used for work or food, clothing or ornament, or mere cruel, sportish amusement.  Fortunately many are too small to be seen, and therefore enjoy life beyond our reach.  And in looking through God’s great stone books made up of records reaching back millions and millions of years, it is a great comfort to learn that vast multitudes of creatures, great and small and infinite in number, lived and had a good time in God’s love before man was created.

The old Scotch fashion of whipping for every act of disobedience or of simple, playful forgetfulness was still kept up in the wilderness, and of course many of those whippings fell upon me.  Most of them were outrageously severe, and utterly barren of fun.  But here is one that was nearly all fun.

Father was busy hauling lumber for the frame house that was to be got ready for the arrival of my mother, sisters, and brother, left behind in Scotland.  One morning, when he was ready to start for another load, his ox-whip was not to be found.  He asked me if I knew anything about it.  I told him I didn’t know where it was, but Scotch conscience compelled me to confess that when I was playing with it I had tied it to Watch’s tail, and that he ran away, dragging it through the grass, and came back without it.  “It must have slipped off his tail,” I said, and so I didn’t know where it was.  This honest, straightforward little story made father so angry that he exclaimed with heavy, foreboding emphasis:  “The very deevil’s in that boy!” David, who had been playing with me and was perhaps about as responsible for the loss of the whip as I was, said never a word, for he was always prudent enough to hold his tongue when the parental weather was stormy, and so escaped nearly all punishment.  And, strange to say, this time I also escaped, all except a terrible scolding, though the thrashing weather seemed darker than ever.  As if unwilling to let the sun see the shameful job, father took me into the cabin where the storm was to fall, and sent David to the woods for a switch.  While he was out selecting the switch, father put in the spare time sketching my play-wickedness in awful colors, and of course referred again and again to the place prepared for bad boys.  In the midst of this terrible word-storm, dreading most the impending thrashing, I whimpered that I was only playing because I couldn’t help it; didn’t know I was doing wrong; wouldn’t do it again, and so forth.  After this miserable dialogue was about exhausted,