gray-haired grandpas and grandmas, love these tiny morsels of animation, with their quick, active, nervous movements, their simulations of fear and their sudden bursts of half-timorous confidence.  With big black eyes, how they squat and watch, or stand, immovable on their hind legs, their little forepaws held as if in petition, solemnly, seriously, steadily watch, watch, watching, until they are satisfied either that you are all right, or are to be shunned.  For, with a whisk of the tail, they either dart towards you, or run in the other direction and hide in the brush, climb with amazing speed up a tree, or rush into their holes in the ground.

Some of them are such babies that they cannot be many months old, and they feel the friendly atmosphere into which they have been born.  And it is an interesting sight to see a keen, stern, active business man from “the city” saunter with his wife after lunch or dinner, sit down on the steps leading down to the water’s edge, or on a tree stump, or squat down on his haunches anywhere on the walk, the lawn, or the veranda, fish some nuts out of his pocket and begin to squeak with his lips to attract the chipmunks.  Sometimes it is a learned advocate of the law, or a banker, or a wine-merchant, or the manager of a large commission-house.  It seems to make no difference.  The “chips” catch them all, and every one delights in making friends with them.

Here is a tiny little chap, watching me as I loll on the stairs.  His black, twinkling eye fixes itself on me.  He is making sure.  Suddenly he darts toward my outstretched fingers where a peanut is securely held.  He seizes it with his sharp teeth, but I hold on.  Then with his little paws he presses and pushes, while he hangs on to the nut with a grip that will not be denied.  If he doesn’t get it all, he succeeds in snapping off a piece and then, either darting off, with a quick whisk of his tail, to enjoy it in his chosen seclusion, or, squatting down on his hind legs, he holds the delicious morsel between his fore-paws and chews away with a rapidity as astonishing as it is interesting and amusing.

Now a fat old fellow—­he looks like a grandpa in age—­comes up.  He is equally suspicious at first, takes his preliminary reconnaissance, darts forward and just about reaches you, when he darts away again.  Only for a moment however.  On he comes, seizes the nut, and eats it then and there, or darts off with inconceivable rapidity, up the tree trunk to a branch twenty, forty feet up, and then sits in most cunning and cute posture, but in just as big a hurry and in equally excitable fashion to eat his lunch as if he were within reach.

Sometimes half a dozen or more of them, big and little, will surround you.  One leaps upon your knee, another comes into your lap, while another runs all over your back and shoulders.  Now and again two aim at the same time for the same nut, and then, look out.  They are selfish little beggars and there is an immense amount of human nature in such tiny creatures.  The bigger one wants the morsel and chases the smaller one away, and he is so mad about it and gets so in earnest that sometimes he chases the other fellow so far that he forgets what it was all about.  He loses the nut himself, but, anyhow, he has prevented the other fellow from getting it.  How truly human!