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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
harm in these little garden-snakes than there is in a robin or a
squirrel--they are poor little, peaceable, timid creatures, which
could not do any harm if they would; but the prejudices of society
are so strong against them that one does not like to cultivate too
much intimacy with them. So we tried to turn out of our path into a
tangle of bushes; and there, instead of one, we found four snakes.
We turned on the other side, and there were two more. In short,
everywhere we looked, the dry leaves were rustling and coiling with
them; and we were in despair. In vain we said that they were
harmless as kittens, and tried to persuade ourselves that their
little bright eyes were pretty, and that their serpentine movements
were in the exact line of beauty: for the life of us, we could not
help remembering their family name and connections; we thought of
those disagreeable gentlemen the anacondas, the rattlesnakes, and the
copper-heads, and all of that bad line, immediate family friends of
the old serpent to whom we are indebted for all the mischief that is
done in this world. So we were quite apprehensive when we saw how
our new neighbourhood was infested by them, until a neighbour calmed
our fears by telling us that snakes always crawled out of their holes
to sun themselves in the spring, and that in a day or two they would
all be gone.
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