I stood several minutes watching, before the little wood-pussy paused and pulled out his head in order to try the wind. How shocked he was! He had been caught off his guard, and instantly snapped himself into a startled hump, for the whiff he got on the wind said _danger!_--and nigh at hand! Throwing his pointed nose straight into the air, and swinging it quickly to the four quarters, he fixed my direction, and turning his back upon me, tumbled off in a dreadful hurry for home. This interesting, though somewhat tame, experience, would have worn the complexion of an adventure for my neighbors, a bare escape,--a ruined Sunday suit, or, at least, a lost jumper or overalls. I had never lost so much as a roundabout in all my life. My neighbors had had innumerable passages with this ramping beast, most of them on the edge of the dark, and many of them verging hard upon the tragic. I had small patience with it all. I wished the whole neighborhood were with me, that I might take this harmless little wood-pussy up in my arms and teach them again the first lesson of the Kingdom of Heaven, and of this earthly Paradise, too, and incidentally put an end forever to these tales of Sunday clothes and nights of banishment in the barn. As nobody was present to see, of course I did not pick the wood-pussy up. I did not need to prove to myself the baselessness of these wild misgivings; nor did I wish, without good cause, further to frighten the innocent creature. I had met many a skunk before this, and nothing of note ever had happened. Here was one, taken suddenly and unawares, and what did he do? He merely winked and blinked vacantly at me over the snow, trying vainly to adjust his eyes to the hard white daylight, and then timidly made off as fast as his pathetic legs could carry him, fetching a compass far around toward his den. I accompanied him, partly to see him safely home, but more to study him on the way, for my neighbors would demand something else than theory and poetry of my new gospel: they would require facts. Facts they should have. I had been a long time coming to my mind concerning the skunk. I had been thinking years about him; and during the previous summer (my second here on the farm) I had made a careful study of the creature’s habits, so that even now I had in hand material of considerable bulk and importance, showing the very great usefulness of the animal. Indeed, I was about ready to embody my beliefs and observations in a monograph, setting forth the need of national protection--of a Committee of One Hundred, say, of continental scope, to look after the preservation and further introduction of the skunk as the friend and ally of man, as the most useful of all our insectivorous creatures, bird or beast.