In New England Fields and Woods. Rowland Evans Robinson
he has forgotten that miserable necessity of existence. When at last he remembers that he has an appetite, you can scarcely imagine that he can have any pleasure in satisfying it with one huge mouthful of twice or thrice the ordinary diameter of his gullet. If you chance to witness his slow and painful gorging of a frog, you hear a cry of distress that might be uttered with equal cause by victim or devourer. When he has fully entered upon the business of reawakened life, many a young field-mouse and noxious insect will go into his maw to his own and your benefit. If there go also some eggs and callow young of ground-nesting birds, why should you question his right, you, who defer slaughter out of pure selfishness, that a little later you may make havoc among the broods of woodcock and grouse?
Of all living things, only man disturbs the nicely adjusted balance of nature. The more civilized he becomes the more mischievous he is. The better he calls himself, the worse he is. For uncounted centuries the bison and the Indian shared a continent, but in two hundred years or so the white man has destroyed the one and spoiled the other.
Surely there is little harm in this lowly bearer of a name honored in knighthood, and the motto of the noble order might be the legend written on his gilded mail, "Evil to him who evil thinks." If this sunny patch of earth is not wide enough for you to share with him, leave it to him and choose another for yourself. The world is wide enough for both to enjoy this season of its promise.
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