“When I first begun to understand jay language correctly, there was a little incident happened here. Seven years ago, the last man in this region but me moved away. There stands his house—been empty ever since; a log house, with a plank¹ roof—just one big room, and no more; no ceiling—nothing between the rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with my cat, taking the sun, and looking at the blue hills, and listening to the leaves rustling² so lonely in the trees, and thinking of the home away yonder in the states, that I hadn’t heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay lit on that house, with an acorn³ in his mouth, and says, ‘Hello, I reckon I’ve struck something.’ When he spoke⁴, the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof, of course, but he didn’t care; his mind was all on the thing he had struck. It was a knot-hole in the roof. He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the other one to the hole, like a possum looking down a jug⁵; then he glanced up with his bright eyes, gave a wink⁶ or two with his wings—which signifies gratification, you understand—and says, ‘It looks like a hole, it’s located like a hole—blamed if I don’t believe it is a hole!’