the brook. I never knew one who found out I was eating him, till he was
half-way down my throat. And just opposite to the place where I
furnished your dear mother's nest, is a small plantation of burdocks, on
the underside of which stick the best flavoured snails I am acquainted
with, in such inexhaustible quantities, that a hedgehog might have
fourteen children in a season, and not fear their coming short of
provisions.

And in the early summer, in the long grass on the edge of the wood--but
no! I will not speak of it.

My dear children, my seven dear children, may you never know what it is
to taste a pheasant's egg--to taste several pheasant's eggs, and to eat
them, shells and all.

There are certain pleasures of which a parent may himself have partaken,
but which, if he cannot reconcile them with his ideas of safety and
propriety, he will do well not to allow his children even to hear of. I
do not say that I wish I had never tasted a pheasant's egg myself, but,
when I think of traps baited with valerian, of my great-uncle's
great-coat nailed to the keeper's door, of the keeper's heavy-heeled
boots, and of the impropriety of poaching, I feel, as a father, that it
is desirable that you should never know that there are such things as
eggs, and then you will be quite happy without them.

But it was not the abundant and varied supply of food which had
determined my choice of our home: it was not even because no woodland
bower could be more beautiful,--because the coppice foliage was fresh
and tender overhead, and the old leaves soft and elastic to the prickles
below,--because the young oaks sheltered us behind, and we had a