The farmer and his son, seeing by the moonlight strange movements in the field, had stolen upon them, in the unguarded moment of their excitement, with their double-barrelled guns, and, as the boy expressed it, bagged four rabbits and a donkey; for poor little donkey stood paralyzed with fear. He had never looked upon death before, and was an easy captive. Without troubling himself to inquire who the rightful owner was, the farmer took him for his own, housed him that night in a stall by himself, where he passed almost the entire night, notwithstanding the fatigues of the day, in such reflections as he was capable of; and though he grew up to be a great donkey, to be sure, the lessons of that day were never forgotten by him.
THE WAYWARD DONKEY AND HIS FRIENDS.—From Drawings by W. H. Beard.
Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois.
I thought you would like to know how spring advances in this part of the country. There are a great many snowy little bloodroots in the woods on the island already (April 22), the mandrakes are coming up, and the spring beauties are in bloom. The snakes are here also, for a friend of mine and I saw a little garter-snake in the woods the other day. It hissed at us in a vicious little way. Yesterday I saw some pretty butterflies flitting about, and there are numerous graceful dragon-flies in the air. Last Sunday, just after a thunder-storm, I was on the front porch, and I saw about eighteen worms, most of them of a kind that is called "hundred-legs," but there were a few of another kind. They were crawling up on the porch to get out of the wet. The robins, bluebirds, cat-birds, woodpeckers, blackbirds, and others are here. This spring some of the gulls from the great lakes were fishing on the river. In Young People No. 24 Arthur L. H. wrote about his caterpillar that turned into a butterfly, and I thought he might like to hear about ours. My brother found a caterpillar that had different-colored cross-bands on it, like a Roman sash. He brought it home, and we fed it on leaves till it made a beautiful cocoon of a thin veil-like material of a pale sea-green color, with a line and a few dots of gold on it near the middle. We expected from all this that it would be a very remarkable butterfly; but it was only one of the common large brown butterflies that we see almost every day in summer.
Bessy F.