Surely a better time must be drawing nigh when godlike human beings
will become truly humane, and learn to put their animal fellow mortals
in their hearts instead of on their backs or in their dinners. In the
mean time we may just as well as not learn to live clean, innocent
lives instead of slimy, bloody ones. All hale, red-blooded boys are
savage, the best and boldest the savagest, fond of hunting and
fishing. But when thoughtless childhood is past, the best rise the
highest above all this bloody flesh and sport business, the wild
foundational animal dying out day by day, as divine uplifting,
transfiguring charity grows in.
Hares and rabbits were seldom seen when we first settled in the
Wisconsin woods, but they multiplied rapidly after the animals that
preyed upon them had been thinned out or exterminated, and food and
shelter supplied in grain-fields and log fences and the thickets of
young oaks that grew up in pastures after the annual grass fires were
kept out. Catching hares in the winter-time, when they were hidden in
hollow fence-logs, was a favorite pastime with many of the boys whose
fathers allowed them time to enjoy the sport.
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