Roof and Meadow | Page 8

crossed
the wide scentless space of his side jump and once more fastened upon
his trail.
III
Back in my knickerbocker days I once went off on a Sunday-school
picnic, and soon, replete with "copenhagen," I sauntered into the woods
alone in quest of less cloying sport. I had not gone far when I picked up
a dainty little ribbon-snake, and having no bag or box along, I rolled
him up in my handkerchief, and journeyed on with the wiggling reptile
safely caged on top of my head under my tight-fitting hat.
After a time I began to feel a peculiar movement under the hat, not
exactly the crawling of a normal snake, but more like that of a snake
with legs. Those were the days when all my soul was bent on the
discovery of a new species--of anything; when the whole of life meant
a journey to the Academy of Natural Sciences with something to be
named. For just an instant flashed the hope that I had found an

uncursed snake, one of the original ones that went on legs. I reached for
the hat, bent over, and pulled it off, and, lo! not a walking snake. Just
an ordinary snake, but with it a live wood-frog!
This, at least, was interesting, the only real piece of magic I have ever
done. Into my hat had gone only a live snake, now I brought forth the
snake and a live frog. This was a snake to conjure with; so I tied him up
again and finally got him home.
The next Sunday the minister preached a temperance sermon, in which
he said some dreadful things about snakes. The creatures do seem in
some dark, horrible way to lurk in the dregs of strong drink: but the
minister was not discriminating; he was too fierce and sweeping,
saying, among other things, that there was a universal human hatred for
snakes, and that one of the chief purposes of the human heel was to
bruise their scaly heads.
I was not born of my Quaker mother to share this "universal human
hatred for snakes"; but I did get from her a wild dislike for sweeping,
general statements. After the sermon I ventured to tell the preacher that
there was an exception to this "universal" rule; that all snakes were not
adders and serpents, but some were just innocent snakes, and that I had
a collection of tame ones which I wished he would come out to see.
He looked astonished, skeptical, then pained. It was during the days, I
think, of my "probation," and into his anxious heart had come the
thought, Was I "running well"? But he dismissed the doubt and
promised to walk over in the morning.
His interest amazed me. But, then, preachers quite commonly are
different on Monday. As we went from cage to cage, he said he had
read how boa-constrictors eat, and wouldn't I show him how these
snakes eat?
We had come to the cage of the little ribbon-snake from the picnic
grove, and had arrived just in time to catch him crawling away out of a
hole that he had worked in the rusty mosquito-netting wire of the cover.
I caught him, put him back, and placed a brickbat over the hole.

I knew that this snake was hungry, because he had had nothing to eat
for nearly a week, and the frog which appeared so mysteriously with
him in my hat was the dinner that he had given up that day of his
capture in his effort to escape.
The minister looked on without a tremor. I took off the brick that he
might see the better. The snake was very long and small around and the
toad, which I had given him, was very short and big around, so that
when it was all over there was a bunch in the middle of the snake
comparable to the lump a prime watermelon would make in the middle
of a small boy if swallowed whole.
While we were still watching, the snake, having comfortably (for a
snake) breakfasted, saw the hole uncovered and stuck out his head. We
made no move. Slowly, cautiously, with his eye upon us, he glided out,
up to the big bunch of breakfast in his middle. This stuck. Frantically
he squirmed, whirled, and lashed about, but in vain. He could not pull
through. He had eaten too much.
There was just one thing for him to do if he would be free: give up the
breakfast of toad (which is much better fare according to snake
standards than pottage according to ours), as he had given up the dinner
of frog. Would he sell his birthright?
Perhaps a snake cannot calculate; perhaps he knows no conflict of
emotions.