“I was more fortunate, because I had run one of my tunnels in an uphill direction for fear that water might some time trouble us. When the flood came I retreated to this high point and saved myself, altho the water almost reached me, and I was obliged to stay there for several days before I could make my way out. “Now I have a pleasant home here among the sandhills, and I have been careful to dig a good upper story with an opening through which I can escape in time of need. The rattlesnake and the owl share my humble home, and we live in peace together.” The owl nodded his wise head, and the snake shook his rattles in approval of this address which included themselves, and made it unnecessary for them to add their voices to the speechmaking. A little green lizard roused himself from his warm place in the sun and added his squeaky voice to the general conference: “I know nothing about dogs and men. My brothers and I live here upon the sandhills where insects are plenty and enemies are few. We spend hours in basking in the delightfully hot sun, and if any noise alarms us dart to our hiding places beneath the roots of the bushes or under some rotten log or tree. We are of several colors, gray, green, yellow or brown, and when we lie still upon the sand or on logs or under leaves it is hard for any beast or bird or man to see us. We may have few blessings, as the world goes, but we at least have nothing of which to complain.” The prairie chickens were next called upon for an account of themselves, and answered: “We are the sole representatives of the great coveys of birds of our kind that used to make their homes upon these prairies. Their drumming could be heard within the thickets, and the swift whirring of their brown wings as they beat the air in their diagonal flight. Life was a pleasure to prairie chickens in those good old days before we were born. “Now it is different. Men learned to consider our flesh a delicacy and hunted us down. They even grudged us the grain that we gathered from their broad wheat and corn fields and treated us as common robbers. Now only a few of us are left, and we dare not call our lives our own. We have learned to be very shy and to hide in the most solitary places. Still, life is not all trouble. The winters in Kansas are short and usually mild, there are plenty of good warm thickets and hedges, and there is always plenty for birds to eat, unless the snow is uncommonly heavy. So we manage to be happy and take each day as it comes.” The quails trooped forward as the prairie-chickens ceased speaking. “We are the farmer’s friends,” said they, “and therefore the farmer is friendly to us. We eat the bugs and worms that would destroy his crop. We take a little of his grain now and then, but we more than repay the damage by our warfare upon the bugs.