then, but he remembered all about it. It was, in fact, this occurrence
which had given him his hobby.

The young man had a specialty. He had several specialties, but to one
yielded all the rest. He had an eye to chipmunks, and had made most
inefficient traps for them and hoped some day to catch one, but they
were nothing to speak of. As for the minnows in the creek, had he not
caught one with a dipper once, and had he not almost hit a big pickerel
with a stone? He knew where the liverwort and anemones grew most
thickly in the spring and had gathered fragrant bunches of them daily,
and he knew, too, of a hollow where there had been a snowy sheet of
winter-green blossoms earlier, and where there would soon be an
abundance of red berries such as his mother liked. At beech-nut
gathering, in the season, he admitted no superior. As for the habits
of the yellow-birds, particularly at the season when they were feeding
upon thistle-seed and made a golden cloud amid the white one as they
drifted with the down, well, he was the only one who really knew
anything about it! Who but he could take the odd-shaped pod of the
wild fleur-de-lis, the common flag, and, winding it up in the flag's
own long, narrow leaf, holding one end, and throwing the pod
sling-wise, produce a sound through the air like that of the swoop of
the night-hawk? And who better than he could pluck lobelia, and
smartweed, and dig wild turnips and bring all for his mother to dry for
possible use, should, he or his father or she catch cold or be ill in
any way? Hopes for the future had he, too. Sometimes a deer had come
in great leaps across the clearing, and once a bear had invaded the
hog-pen. The young man had an idea that as soon as he became a little
taller and could take down the heavy gun, an old "United States yager"
with a big bore, bloodshed would follow in great quantities. He had
persuaded his father to let him aim the piece once or twice, and had
confidence that if he could get a fair shot at any animal, that animal
would die. Were it a deer, he had concluded he would aim from a great
stump a few feet distant from the house. If a bear came, he would shut
the door and raise the window, not too far, and blaze away from there.
But in none of all these things, either present exploits or imaginings
for the future, was his interest most entangled. His specialty was
Snakes.

Not intended by nature for a naturalist was this youthful individual