was his nature merely made him a disobedient boy--turned a good boy
into a bad one. He was too much in terror of his father to disobey
openly, but he used to sneak away at all opportunities to the fields
and woods, and at each new bird or plant he found he had an exquisite
thrill of mingled pleasure and pain--the pain because he had no name
for it or means of learning its nature.

The intense interest in animals was his master passion, and thanks to
this, his course to and from school was a very crooked one, involving
many crossings of the street, because thereby he could pass first a
saloon in whose window was a champagne advertising chromo that
portrayed two Terriers chasing a Rat; next, directly opposite this,
was a tobacconist's, in the window of which was a beautiful effigy of
an Elephant, laden with tobacco. By going a little farther out of his
way, there was a game store where he might see some Ducks, and was
sure, at least, of a stuffed Deer's head; and beyond that was a
furrier shop, with an astonishing stuffed Bear. At another point he
could see a livery stable Dog that was said to have killed a Coon, and
at yet another place on Jervie Street was a cottage with a high
veranda, under which, he was told, a chained Bear had once been kept.
He never saw the Bear. It had been gone for years, but he found
pleasure in passing the place. At the corner of Pemberton and Grand
streets, according to a schoolboy tradition, a Skunk had been killed
years ago and could still be smelled on damp nights. He always
stopped, if passing near on a wet night, and sniffed and enjoyed that
Skunk smell. The fact that it ultimately turned out to be a leakage of
sewer gas could never rob him of the pleasure he originally found in
it.

[Illustration: "Gazing spellbound in that window"]