sobriety. Nutcracker Lodge was a hole in a sturdy old chestnut
overhanging a shady dell, and was held to be as respectably kept an
establishment as there was in the whole forest. Even Miss Jenny
Wren, the greatest gossip of the neighbourhood, never found anything
to criticise in its arrangements; and old Parson Too-whit, a
venerable owl who inhabited a branch somewhat more exalted, as became
his profession, was in the habit of saving himself much trouble in
his parochial exhortations by telling his parishioners in short to
"look at the Nutcrackers" if they wanted to see what it was to live a
virtuous life. Everything had gone on prosperously with them, and
they had reared many successive families of young Nutcrackers, who
went forth to assume their places in the forest of life, and to
reflect credit on their bringing up,--so that naturally enough they
began to have a very easy way of considering themselves models of
wisdom.

But at last it came along, in the course of events, that they had a
son named Featherhead, who was destined to bring them a great deal of
anxiety. Nobody knows what the reason is, but the fact was, that
Master Featherhead was as different from all the former children of
this worthy couple as if he had been dropped out of the moon into
their nest, instead of coming into it in the general way. Young
Featherhead was a squirrel of good parts and a lively disposition,
but he was sulky and contrary and unreasonable, and always finding
matter of complaint in everything his respectable papa and mamma did.
Instead of assisting in the cares of a family,--picking up nuts and
learning other lessons proper to a young squirrel,--he seemed to
settle himself from his earliest years into a sort of lofty contempt
for the Nutcrackers, for Nutcracker Lodge, and for all the good old
ways and institutions of the domestic hole, which he declared to be