four or five great old oaks and chestnuts had to be cut away to let
it in; and now it stands on the bank of the river, the edges of which
are still overhung with old forest-trees, chestnuts and oaks, which
look at themselves in the glassy stream.

A little knoll near the house was chosen for a garden-spot; a dense,
dark mass of trees above, of bushes in mid-air, and of all sorts of
ferns and wild-flowers and creeping vines on the ground. All these
had to be cleared out, and a dozen great trees cut down and dragged
off to a neighbouring saw-mill, there to be transformed into boards
to finish off our house. Then, fetching a great machine, such as
might be used to pull a giant's teeth, with ropes, pulleys, oxen, and
men, and might and main, we pulled out the stumps, with their great
prongs and their network of roots and fibres; and then, alas! we had
to begin with all the pretty wild, lovely bushes, and the
checkerberries and ferns and wild blackberries and huckleberry-
bushes, and dig them up remorselessly, that we might plant our corn
and squashes. And so we got a house and a garden right out of the
heart of our piece of wild wood, about a mile from the city of H-.

Well, then, people said it was a lonely place, and far from
neighbours,--by which they meant that it was a good way for them to
come to see us. But we soon found that whoever goes into the woods
to live finds neighbours of a new kind, and some to whom it is rather
hard to become accustomed.

For instance, on a fine day early in April, as we were crossing over
to superintend the building of our house, we were startled by a
striped snake, with his little bright eyes, raising himself to look
at us, and putting out his red, forked tongue. Now there is no more