frolic. In the heart of the woods it was, in a little opening
where the moonlight came streaming in through the pines, making soft
gray shadows for hide-and-seek, and where no prowling fox ever dreamed
of looking.

With most of us, I fear, the acquaintance with Bunny is too limited
for us to appreciate his frolicsome ways and his happy, fun-loving
disposition. The tame things which we sometimes see about country
yards are often stupid, like a playful kitten spoiled by too much
handling; and the flying glimpse we sometimes get of a bundle of brown
fur, scurrying helter-skelter through and over the huckleberry bushes,
generally leaves us staring in astonishment at the swaying leaves
where it disappeared, and wondering curiously what it was all about.
It was only a brown rabbit that you almost stepped upon in your
autumn walk through the woods.

Look under the crimson sumach yonder, there in the bit of brown grass,
with the purple asters hanging over, and you will find his form, where
he has been sitting all the morning and where he watched you all the
way up the hill. But you need not follow; you will not find him again.
He never runs straight; the swaying leaves there where he disappeared
mark the beginning of his turn, whether to right or left you will
never know. Now he has come around his circle and is near you
again--watching you this minute, out of his bit of brown grass. As you
move slowly away in the direction he took, peering here and there
among the bushes, Bunny behind you sits up straight in his old form
again, with his little paws held very prim, his long ears pointed
after you, and his deep brown eyes shining like the waters of a hidden
spring among the asters. And he chuckles to himself, and thinks how he
fooled you that time, sure.

To see Br'er Rabbit at his best, that is, at his own playful comical
self, one must turn hunter, and learn how to sit still, and be
patient. Only you must not hunt in the usual way; not by day, for then
Bunny is stowed away in his form on the sunny slope of a southern
hillside, where one's eyes will never find him; not with gun and dog,
for then the keen interest and quick sympathy needed to appreciate any
phase of animal life gives place to the coarser excitement of the
hunt; and not by going about after Bunny, for your heavy footsteps and
the rustle of leaves will only send him scurrying away into safer
solitudes. Find where he loves to meet with his fellows, in quiet
lit