One would approach at first warily through the shrub oaks, running over the snow-crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his “trotters,” as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were eyed on him⁠—for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl⁠—wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance⁠—I never saw one walk⁠—and then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time⁠—for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect.