For On Such Has The
Midnight Marauder Set His Heart:
After such does noiselessly prowl,
favoured by darkness - the dissipated rascal - querens quem devoret -
determined to make up, on
The morrow, by a long meridian siesta on
the highest pinacle of a snow-drift, for the loss of his night's-rest.
Should fortune refuse the sly prowler the coveted hen, turkey, goose,
or hare, warmly clad in his fur coat and leggings, with tail
horizontal, he sallies forth over the snow-wreathed fields, on the
skirts of woods, in search of ground mice, his ordinary provender.
But, you will say, how can he discover them under the snow? By that
wonderful instinct with which nature has endowed the brute creation to
provide for their sustenance, each according to its nature, to its
wants. By his marvellously acute ear, the fox detects the ground mouse
under the snow, though he should utter a noise scarcely audible to a
human ear. Mr. Fox sets instantly to work, digs down the earth, and in
a trice gobbles up mus, his wife, and young family. Should nothing
occur to disturb his arrangements, he devotes each day in winter, from
ten or half-past ten in the forenoon, to repose; selecting the
loftiest snow-bank he can find, or else a large rock, or perchance any
other eminence from which -
"Monarch of all he surveys" -
he can command a good view of the neighborhod, and readily scent
approaching danger. Nor does he drop off immediately in a sound sleep,
like a turtle-fed alderman; but rather, like a suspicious, blood-
thirsty land pirate, as he is, he first snatches hastily "forty
winks," then starts up nervously, for several times, scanning all
around with his cruel, cunning eye - snuffing the air.
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