Page:Under the Sun.djvu/65

Rh eternal damnation, for its presumption is unique. The plummet of reflection cannot sound it, nor the net of memory bring up a precedent. It is gratuitous, unprovoked, and aimless. It is all for love. There are no stakes such as the crow plays for, and in its shrill gamut there is no string of menace or of challenge. Its scrannel quips are pointless, — so let them pass. Any one, unless he be a Scotch piper, has a right to stone the Seven Sisters for their fulsome clatter, but the tongue of the squirrel is free as air. There is no embargo on it; it is out of bond, and wags when and where it lists. Let the craven kite (itself the butt of smaller birds) swoop at it, but give your sympathy to the squirrel. A woman who cannot kiss and a bird which cannot sing ought to be at any rate taught, but who would look for harmony from a squirrel? Was wisdom ever found in Gotham or truth in the compliments of beggars? Would you hook Leviathan by the nose, or hedge a cuckoo in? Again, besides its voice, people have been found to object to its tail. But Hiawatha liked it. There is no malice in the motion of a squirrel’s tail. It does not resemble the cocked-tip gesture of the robin’s or the wren’s. It does n’t swing like the cat’s, or dart like the scorpion’s. It is never offensively straight on end like a cow’s on a windy day, nor slinking like a pariah dog’s. It has none of the odious mobility of the monkey’s, nor the three-inch arrogance of the goat’s. Neither is there in it the pendulous monotony of the wagtail’s, nor the spasmodic wriggle of the sucking lamb’s. Yet it is a speaking feature. That fluffy perkiness is an index of the squirrel mind. With an upward jerk it puts a question, with a downward one emphasizes an assertion; gives plausibility with a wave,