BEWARR OF THE BOOLE DOGGES

When I was a child one of these signs still remained--at the left, just
beyond Pelham Bridge. And people used to laugh and point at the great
trees and say that because of the sign the British had never dared to
trespass and cut down the timber. Now the man had never owned a Boole
Dogge, nor had any of his descendants. I doubt if there was ever one on
the premises, unless latterly, perhaps, there has been a French bulldog
or so let out of a passing automobile to enjoy a few moments of
unconventional liberty. But the bluff had always held good. As my mother
used to say: "I know--but then there _may_ be a bulldog now." And that
farm was always out of bounds. I relate this for two reasons--to show
how stable and conservative a neighborhood was ours, and because on that
very farm, and chosen for the very reason which I have related, stood
the hollow oak which is to play its majestic part in this modest
narrative.

The apple orchards of the Boole Dogge Farm ran southerly to a hickory
wood, the hickory wood to an oak wood, the oak wood to thick scrub of
all sorts, the scrub to the sedge, and the sedge to the salt mud at low
tide, and at high to the bassy waters themselves of inmost Pelham Bay.
On the right was the long, black trestle of the Harlem River Branch
Railroad, on the left the long-curved ironwork of Pelham Bridge. And the
farm, promontoried with its woods and thick cover between these
boundaries and more woods to the north, was an overgrown, run-down,
desolate, lonely, deserted old place. Had it not been for the old sign
that said "Bewarr," it must have been a great playground for
children--for their picnics, and their hide-and-seeks, and their games
at Indians. But the ferocious animals imagined by the old Revolutionary