"FAT FROM A SUMMER'S FEEDING" (p. 63)
Now a woodchuck, fat from a summer's feeding, climbs heavily to a tree stump and seats himself to pass the morning in his favorite avocation of doing nothing. He worked during the night or the very early morning, for fresh dirt lay at the entrance to his hole. Evidently he had been enlarging it for the winter. Like a Plato at his philosophies he sits now, slowly moving his head from side to side, as if steeping his senses in the beauty of the world around him so that all the dreams of his long winter sleep shall be pleasant. A persistent fly, a slap, and the woodchuck hears. He turns that dark gray, solemn looking face, and asks mutely, reproachfully, perhaps resentfully, why his reverie has been disturbed. Then he hastily scurries to his burrow and he will not again appear though I sit here all day.
