BOOKS that have become classics--books that ave had their day and now
get more praise than perusal--always remind me of venerable colonels and
majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves
retired upon half pay.

WHETHER or not the fretful porcupine rolls itself into a ball is
a subject over which my friend John Burroughs and several brother
naturalists have lately become as heated as if the question involved
points of theology. Up among the Adirondacks, and in the very heart
of the region of porcupines, I happen to have a modest cottage. This
retreat is called The Porcupine, and I ought by good rights to know
something about the habits of the small animal from which it derives
its name. Last winter my dog Buster used to return home on an average of
three times a month from an excursion up Mt. Pisgah with his nose
stuck full of quills, and _he_ ought to have some concrete ideas on the
subject. We two, then, are prepared to testify that the porcupine in its
moments of relaxation occasionally contracts itself into what might be
taken for a ball by persons not too difficult to please in the matter
of spheres. But neither Buster nor I--being unwilling to get into
trouble--would like to assert that it is an actual ball. That it is a
shape with which one had better not thoughtlessly meddle is a conviction
that my friend Buster stands ready to defend against all comers.

WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman in one of his poems as "a
creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food" has
always appeared to me too cannibalesque to be poetical. It directly sets
one to thinking of the South Sea islanders.

THOUGH Iago was not exactly the kind of person one would select as a