all over there was a bunch in the middle of the snake comparable to
the lump a prime watermelon would make in the middle of a small boy if
swallowed whole.

While we were still watching, the snake, having comfortably (for a snake)
breakfasted, saw the hole uncovered and stuck out his head. We made no
move. Slowly, cautiously, with his eye upon us, he glided out, up to the
big bunch of breakfast in his middle. This stuck. Frantically he squirmed,
whirled, and lashed about, but in vain. He could not pull through. He had
eaten too much.

There was just one thing for him to do if he would be free: give up the
breakfast of toad (which is much better fare according to snake standards
than pottage according to ours), as he had given up the dinner of frog.
Would he sell his birthright?

Perhaps a snake cannot calculate; perhaps he knows no conflict of
emotions. Yet something very like these processes seemed to go on within
the scaly little reptile. He ceased all violent struggle, laid his length
upon the netting, and _seemed_ to think, to weigh the chances, to count
the cost.

Soon he softly drew back into the cage. A series of severe contortions
followed; the obstructing bunch began to move forward, up, farther and
farther, until at last, dazed, squeezed, and half smothered, but entirely
alive and unhurt, the toad appeared and once more opened his eyes to the
blessed light.

The snake quickly put his head through the hole, slipped out again, and
glided away into his freedom. He had earned it. The toad deserved his
liberty too, and I took him into the strawberry-patch.

The minister looked on at it all. Perhaps he didn't learn anything. But I
did.

THE MARSH

[Illustration]

THE MARSH

And breathe it free, and breathe it free,
By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty.

I

It was a late June day whose breaking found me upon the edge of the great
salt-marshes which lie behind East Point Light, as the Delaware Bay lies
in front of it, and which run in a wide, half-land, half-bay border down
the cape.

I followed along the black sandy road which goes to the Light until close
to the old Zane's Place,--the last farm-house of the uplands,--when I
turned off into the marsh toward the river. The mosquitos rose from the
damp grass at every step, swarming up around me in a cloud, and streaming
off behind like a comet's tail, which hummed instead of glowed. I was the
only male among them. It was a cloud