each other from bough to bough, and chattering at each other in the
gayest possible manner.

You may be sure that such a strange thing as a house for human beings
to live in did not come into this wild wood without making quite a
stir and excitement among the inhabitants that lived there before.
All the time it was building, there was the greatest possible
commotion in the breasts of all the older population; and there
wasn't even a black ant, or a cricket, that did not have his own
opinion about it, and did not tell the other ants and crickets just
what he thought the world was coming to in consequence.

Old Mrs. Rabbit declared that the hammering and pounding made her
nervous, and gave her most melancholy forebodings of evil times.
"Depend upon it, children," she said to her long-eared family, "no
good will come to us from this establishment. Where man is, there
comes always trouble for us poor rabbits."

The old chestnut-tree, that grew on the edge of the woodland ravine,
drew a great sigh which shook all his leaves, and expressed it as his
conviction that no good would ever come of it,--a conviction that at
once struck to the heart of every chestnut-burr. The squirrels
talked together of the dreadful state of things that would ensue.
"Why!" said old Father Gray, "it's evident that Nature made the nuts
for us; but one of these great human creatures will carry off and
gormandize upon what would keep a hundred poor families of squirrels
in comfort." Old Ground-mole said it did not require very sharp eyes
to see into the future, and it would just end in bringing down the
price of real estate in the whole vicinity, so that every decent-
minded and respectable quadruped would be obliged to move away;--for