<h2><SPAN name="VIII" id="VIII"></SPAN>VIII</h2>
<p class="caption">THE CHIPMUNK</p>
<p>As the woodchuck sleeps away the
bitterness of cold, so in his narrower
chamber sleeps the chipmunk. Happy
little hermit, lover of the sun, mate of
the song sparrow and the butterflies,
what a goodly and hopeful token of the
earth's renewed life is he, verifying the
promises of his own chalices, the squirrelcups,
set in the warmest corners of
the woodside, with libations of dew and
shower drops, of the bluebird's carol, the
sparrow's song of spring.</p>
<p>Now he comes forth from his long
night into the fullness of sunlit day, to
proclaim his awakening to his summer
comrades, a gay recluse clad all in the
motley, a jester, maybe, yet no fool.</p>
<p>His voice, for all its monotony, is
inspiring of gladness and contentment,
whether he utters his thin, sharp chip or
full-mouthed cluck, or laughs a chittering<span class="pagenum">[38]</span>
mockery as he scurries in at his narrow
door.</p>
<p>He winds along his crooked pathway
of the fence rails and forages for half-forgotten
nuts in the familiar grounds,
brown with strewn leaves or dun with
dead grass. Sometimes he ventures to
the top rail and climbs to a giddy ten-foot
height on a tree, whence he looks
abroad, wondering, on the wide expanse
of an acre.</p>
<p>Music hath charms for him, and you
may entrance him with a softly whistled
tune and entice him to frolic with a
herds-grass head gently moved before
him.</p>
<p>When the fairies have made the white
curd of mallow blossoms into cheeses
for the children and the chipmunk, it
is a pretty sight to see him gathering
his share handily and toothily stripping
off the green covers, filling his cheek
pouches with the dainty disks and scampering
away to his cellar with his ungrudged
portion. Alack the day, when
the sweets of the sprouting corn tempt
him to turn rogue, for then he becomes
a banned outlaw, and the sudden thunder<span class="pagenum">[39]</span>
of the gun announces his tragic fate.
He keeps well the secret of constructing
his cunning house, without a show of
heaped or scattered soil at its entrance.
Bearing himself honestly, and escaping
his enemies, the cat, the hawk, and the
boy, he lives a long day of happy inoffensive
life. Then when the filmy curtain
of the Indian summer falls upon the
year again, he bids us a long good-night.<span class="pagenum">[40]</span></p>
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