Text Leveling System

Rascal

RDQ:	3433	Max Word/Sent	62	Total Words	3860		Diff Words	1321
Lex	1100	Ave Word/.Sent	15	Hi Freq occurs	2750	71.2%	Hi freq	500	37.9%
AR	9.0	Long Sentences	33.9	Low Freq occurs	448	11.6%	Low freq	371	28.1%

IT was in May, 1918, that a new friend and companion came into my life: a character, a personality, and a ringtailed wonder. He weighed less than one pound when I discovered him, a furry ball of utter dependence and awakening curiosity, unweaned and defenseless. Wowser and I were immediately protective. We would have fought any boy or dog in town who sought to harm him.
Wowser was an exceptionally intelligent and responsible watchdog, guarding our house and lawns and gardens and all my pets. But because of his vast size-one hundred and seventy pounds of muscled grace and elegance-he seldom had to resort to violence. He could shake any dog on the block as a terrier shakes a rat. Wowser never started a fight, but after being challenged, badgered, and insulted, he eventually would turn his worried face and great sad eyes upon his tormentor, and
more in sorrow than in anger, grab the intruder by the scruff of the neck, and toss him into the gutter.
Wowser was an affectionate, perpetually hungry Saint Bernard. Like most dogs of his breed he drooled a little. In the house he had to lie with his muzzle on a bath towel, his eyes downcast as though in slight disgrace. Pat Delaney, a saloonkeeper who lived a couple of blocks up the street, said that Saint Bernards drool for the best of all possible reasons. He explained that in the Alps these noble dogs set forth every winter day, with little kegs of brandy strapped beneath their chins, to rescue wayfarers lost in the snowdrifts. Generations of carrying the brandy, of which they have never tasted so much as a blessed drop, have made them so thirsty that they continuously drool. The trait had now become hereditary, Pat said, and whole litters of bright and thirsty little Saint Bernards are born drooling for brandy.
On this pleasant afternoon in May, Wowser and I started up First Street toward Crescent Drive where a semicircle of late Victorian houses enjoyed a hilltop view. Northward lay miles of meadows, groves of trees, a winding stream, and the best cluck and muskrat marsh in Rock County. As we turned down a country lane past Bardeen's orchard and vineyard, the signature of spring was everywhere: violets and anemones in the grass; the apple trees in promising bud along the bough.
Ahead lay some of the most productive walnut and hickory trees I had ever looted, a good swimming hole in the creek, and, in one bit of forest, a real curiosity-a phosphorescent stump which gleamed at night with foxfire, as luminescent as all the lightning bugs in the world -ghostly and terrifying to boys who saw it for the first time. It scared me witless as I came home one evening from fishing. So I made it a point to bring my friends that way on other evenings, not wishing to be selfish about my pleasures.
Oscar Sunderland saw me as I passed his bleak farmhouse far down that lane. He was a friend of mine who knew enough not to talk when we went fishing. And we were trapping partners on the marsh. His mother was a gentle Norwegian woman who spoke English with no trace of an accent, and also her native language. His father Herman Sunderland was another kettle of hasenpfeffer-German on his mother's side and Swedish on his father's-with a temper and dialect all his own.
Oscar's mother baked delicious Norwegian pastries, particularly around Christmastime. Sometimes in placing before me a plate of her delicacies she would say something tender to me in Norwegian. I always turned away to hide the shameful moisture in my eyes. As Mrs. Sunder. land knew, my mother had died when I was seven, and I think that was why she was especially kind to me.
Oscar's tough old father presented no such problem. I doubt that he had ever said anything kind to anyone in his life. Oscar was very much afraid of him and risked a whipping if he were not at home in time to help with the milking.
No one was concerned about the hours I kept. I was a very competent eleven-year-old. If I came home long after dark, my father would merely look up from his
book to greet me vaguely and courteously. He allowed me to live my own life, keep pet skunks and woodchucks in the back yard and the barn, pamper my tame crow, my many cats, and my faithful Saint Bernard. He even let me build my eighteen-foot canoe in the living room. I had not entirely completed the framework, so it would take another year at least. When we had visitors, they sat in the easy chairs surrounding the canoe, or skirted the prow to reach the great shelves of books we were continuously lending. We lived alone and liked it, cooked and cleaned in our own fashion, and paid little attention to indignant housewives who told my father that this was no way to bring up a child.
My father agreed amiably that this might well be true, and then returned to his endless research for a novel concerning the Fox and Winnebago Indians, which for some reason was never published.
"I'm headed for Wentworth's woods," I told Oscar, "and I may not start home before moonrise."
"Wait a minute," Oscar said. "We'll need something to eat."
He returned so swiftly with a paper sack filled with coffee cake and cookies that I knew he had swiped them. "You'll get a licking when you get home." "Ishkabibble, I should worry!" Oscar said, a happy grin spreading across his wide face.
We crossed the creek on the stepping stones below the dam. Pickerel were making their seasonal run up the stream, and we nearly caught one with our hands as he
snaked his way between the stones. Kildeer started up from the marshy shallows, crying "kildeer, kildeer" as though a storm were brewing.
Wowser had many virtues, but he was not a hunting dog. So we were much surprised when in Wentworth's woods he came to a virtual point. Oscar and I waited silently while the Saint Bernard, on his great paws, padded softly to the hollow base of a rotten stump. He sniffed the hole critically, then turned and whined, telling us plainly that something lived in that den.
"Dig 'em out, Wowser," I shouted.
"He won't dig," Oscar predicted. "He's too lazy." "You just watch," I said loyally. But I wasn't betting any glass marbles.
In another minute Wowser was making the dirt fly, and Oscar and I were helping in a frenzy of excitement. We scooped the soft earth with our hands, and used our pocket knives when we came to old decaying roots.
"I'll bet it's a fox," I panted hopefully. "Probably an old woodchuck," Oscar said.
But we couldn't have been more surprised when a furious mother raccoon exploded from her lair screaming her rage and dismay. Wowser nearly fell over backward to avoid the flying claws and slashing little teeth. A moment later the big raccoon had racked her way up a slender oak tree. Thirty feet above us she continued to scream and scold.
In plain sight now, within the den, we found four baby raccoons, a month old perhaps. The entire litter of kits might easily have fitted within my cap. Each tail had
five black rings. Each small face had a sharp black mask. Eight bright eyes peered up at us, filled with wonder and worry. And from four inquiring little mouths came whimpered questions.
"Good old Wowser," I said.
"That's a pretty good dog you've got there," Oscar admitted, "but you'd better hold him back."
"He wouldn't hurt them; he takes care of all my pets."
In fact the big dog settled down with a sigh of satisfaction, as near to the nest as possible, ready to adopt one or all of these interesting little creatures. But there was one service he could not render. He could not feed them.
"We can't take them home without their mother," I told Oscar. "They're too young."
"How do we catch the mother?" Oscar asked. "We draw straws."
"And then what?"
"The one who gets the short straw shinnies up the tree and catches her."
"Oh, no," Oscar said. "Oh no you don't. I ain't that crazy."
"Come on, Oscar." "No siree."
But at just this moment the four little raccoons set up such a plaintive quavering that we all felt miserable. We had to catch that mother raccoon. Wowser was as sad as I was. He pointed his big muzzle toward the evening sky and howled mournfully.
"Well," Oscar said, kicking his shoe into the fresh
earth, "I'd better be getting home to help with the milking."
"Quitter," I taunted. "Who's a quitter?" "You're a quitter."
"Well, OK, I'll draw straws; but I think you're loony." I held the straws and Oscar drew the long one. Naturally I had to live up to my bargain. I looked far above me. In the fading glow of the sunset there she still was, twenty pounds of ring-tailed dynamite. I patted Wowser as though for the last time and began my tough scramble up that slender trunk.
As I shinnied up the tree, in no great hurry to tangle with the raccoon, I had one piece of good fortune. The full moon began to rise above an eastern hill giving me a little more light for my dangerous maneuver. Far out on the first limb, the outraged animal took a firm stance, facing me, her eyes glowing balefully in the moonlight.
"I'm going to cut off the branch with my jackknife," I told Oscar.
"And then what?"
"You're supposed to catch her when she falls in the hazel brush."
Oscar suggested that I had bats in my belfry. But he took off his corduroy jacket and prepared to throw it over the raccoon in a do-or-die effort for which he had little enthusiasm.
Whittling through two-and-one-half inches of white oak with a fairly dull jackknife is a laborious process, as I soon discovered. I was in a cramped position, holding
on with my left hand and hacking away at the wood with my right. And I feared the raccoon might try to rush me when the limb began to break.
	The moon rose slowly through the trees as blisters rose slowly on my right hand. But I couldn't weaken now. From far below came the whimpering of the raccoon kits, and an occasional mournful howl from Wowser. Tree toads and frogs in the swamp began their chorus, and a little screech owl, sounding almost like another raccoon, added an eerie tremolo.
"How you coming?" Oscar asked. "Coming fine. Get ready to catch her."
"Count on me," Oscar said, his voice less convincing than his brave words.
The tasseled limb of the white oak sighed at last, broke with a snap, and drifted down to the hazel brush below.
Oscar tried. I will give him credit for that. He tangled for five seconds with that raccoon, and then retreated with a damaged jacket. Three of the little raccoons, hearing their mother's call, trundled with amazing swiftness into the hazel brush to follow her, and were gone. Oscar, however, was quick enough to cup one kit in his cap, our only reward for our labor-but reward enough, as time would prove. As nearly as we could tell, the handsome, sharply marked little animal was covered only with soft gray underfur, having few of the darker guard hairs which later gleam on the adult raccoon.
He was the only baby raccoon I have ever held in my hands. And as he nestled upward like a quail chick,
and nuzzled like a puppy seeking its mother's milk, I was both overwhelmed with the ecstasy of ownership and frightened by the enormous responsibility we had assumed. Wowser romped beside us through the moonlight, often coming to sniff and lick the new pet we had found-this bit of masked mischief which had stolen his heart as well as my own.
"He's yours," Oscar said sadly. "My old man would never let me keep him. He shot a 'coon in the chicken house just a few weeks ago."
"You can come and see him," I suggested. "Sure, I can come and see him."
We walked in silence for a time, thinking of the injustices of the world that made so few allowances for the nature of raccoons and boys of our age. Then we began talking about all the raccoons we had ever seen, and how we would feed this kit and teach him all the things he would have to learn.
"I seen a raccoon mother once with five kits," Oscar said.
"What were they doing?"
"She was leading them along the edge of the stream. They did everything she did."
"Like what?"
"Feeling around with their front paws hunting for crawdads, I guess."
On the horizon there were flashes of distant lightning and a low rumbling of thunder, sounding like artillery many miles away. It reminded us that the war was still raging in France, and that maybe my brother Herschel
was being moved up to the front. I hated to think about that terrible war which had been killing and wounding millions of men ever since the year my mother died. Here we were, safe and remote from the war, and worrying about such small and unimportant things as whether Oscar would get a whipping when he got home, and how to feed and raise a little raccoon.
As we came up the lane toward Sunderland's farmhouse, Oscar began saying, "Ishkabibble, I should worry." But he acted worried to me. When we reached his front yard he dared me and double-dared me to go up and knock on the door. Meanwhile he hid behind a flowering spirea bush and waited to see what might happen.
Oscar was wise to let me do the knocking. Herman Sunderland came storming out, swearing in German and Swedish. He was certainly angry with Oscar, and he didn't seem to like me very much either.
"Vere is dot no-goot son of mine?"
"It wasn't Oscar's fault," I said. "I asked him to come for a walk with me, and . . ."
"Vere iss he now?" "Well," I said.
"Vell, vell, vell! Vot you mean, vell?"
"We dug out a den of raccoons," I said, "and here is the one we brought home."
"Coons," shouted Sunderland, "verdammte varmints." I was afraid that Mr. Sunderland might flush Oscar from behind the spirea bush, but at just this moment Oscar's gracious mother came out on the front porch, the moonlight shining on her silvering hair.
"Go to bed, Herman," she said quietly. "I will take care of this. Come out, Oscar, from behind that bush." To my surprise, Oscar's father meekly obeyed, taking a lamp up that long, dark parlor stairway-his shadow much taller than himself. And Oscar's mother took us to the kitchen where she fed us a warm supper and began to heat a little milk to the temperature that would be right for a human baby.
"It is hungry, the little one," she said, petting the small raccoon. "Go fetch a clean wheat straw, Oscar."
She filled her own mouth with warm milk, put the wheat straw between her lips, and slanted the straw down to the mouth of the little raccoon. I watched, fascinated, as my new pet took the straw eagerly and began to nurse.
"Look how the little one eats," Oscar's mother said. ""This is the way you will have to feed him, Sterling."
JUNE was the month! School was out, cherries were ripe, and all the boys and some of the girls went barefoot. Boys had many extra advantages such as swimming naked and wandering alone along the streams and rivers, casting for bass among the water lilies. Girls had to wear swimming suits and come in earlier from our evening games of prisoner's base and run-sheep-run. I was very thankful that I was a boy.
Despite mowing lawns and working in my war garden, I had many additional hours to spend with my pets, watching my woodchucks nibbling clover, feeding my four yearling skunks their bread and milk, and trying to keep Poe-the-Crow from stealing bright objects such as car keys. Most satisfying of all were the hours that I spent with my small raccoon whom I had named Rascal.
Perhaps a psychologist might say that I had substituted pets for a family. I had a human family, of course-interesting. well-educated, and affectionate. But Mother was dead, my father often away on business trips, my brother Herschel fighting in France, and my sisters Theo and Jessica now living their adult lives. Both sisters had taken tender care of me after Mother died, Jessica in particular postponing her career and marriage.
But now Theo was happily wed to a young paper-mill owner in northern Minnesota, and Jessica, a talented linguist and poet, was taking postgraduate work at the University of Chicago. Often the only occupant of our ten-room house was an eleven-year-old boy working on his canoe in the living room and thinking "long, long thoughts."
One problem that puzzled me was theological. I asked myself how God could be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-merciful and still allow so much suffering in the world. In particular, how could He have taken my gifted and gentle mother when she was only forty-seven years old?
I asked some of these questions of Reverend Hooton,* the Methodist minister whose church and parsonage adjoined our property, and his answers were not particularly satisfying.
It seemed to me unfair that she could not have lived to see the pets I was raising-Rascal especially. I could imagine her pleasure both as a biologist and as a mother. She would have been interested in studying more closely  Father of Earnest A. Hooton, anthropologist and author.
the habits of all these animals, and would have helped me solve some of the difficult problems they presented. For instance, both my crow and my skunks were currently in trouble with the Methodists. Poe-the-Crow lived in the belfry of the church, and shouted the only phrase he knew, "What fun! What fun!" as dignified parishioners came to church services, weddings, and funerals. There was one faction of the church in favor of evicting Poe, with a shotgun if necessary.
My harmless skunks had further complicated matters on a recent Sunday evening. These pleasant pets that I had dug from a hole the previous spring were now more than a year old and somewhat restless. They were handsome, glossy creatures-one broad-stripe, one narrow stripe, one short-stripe, and one black beauty with a single star of white on his head: All four had perfect manners. Having never been frightened or abused, they had never scented up the neighborhood.
But one night in June when Wowser must have been drowsing, a stray dog came barking and snarling at them through the woven wire, and they reacted predictably. Sunday services were progressing at the church not seventy feet from their cage. It was a warm evening, and the windows of the choir loft were open. For the first time in his life Reverend Hooton shortened his sermon.
On Monday morning a delegation of deacons came to protest to my father.
With both Poe and the skunks at issue, I was in double jeopardy, so I decided to make an accommodation. I gave all my skunks a last meal of bread and milk and took
them in two carrying baskets to Wentworth's woods where there were many empty dens to hide in. The Methodists were so pleased to be rid of the skunks that they decided to postpone indefinitely the eviction of Poe-the-Crow.
Rascal meantime was living in a hole some five feet above the ground in our big red oak tree. Since raccoons usually stay in their nest for the first two months of their lives, I saw little of my pet except when 'l took him out to feed him. I soon taught him how to drink his warm milk from a saucer, which was a great improvement over the laborious process of letting him nurse through a wheat straw.
Wowser was his guardian, remaining almost constantly at the foot of the oak tree, even sleeping there at night. But on an afternoon in mid-June, Wowser and I were both alerted by a quavering trill at the hole in the tree, and there we saw a small black mask and two beady eyes peering out at the wide world beyond. A moment later Rascal had executed an about-face and was emerging from the hole, ring tail first, backing down the tree cautiously in the manner of a little bear. Raccoons have five unretractable claws on each of their hands and feet, making headlong descent inadvisable. So Rascal instinctively came down tail first, scrambling frantically from time to time, and often looking over his shoulder to see how far he was from the ground.
Wowser was very much disturbed and yelped a few questions, looking up to see how I felt about this new problem. I told my Saint Bernard not to worry, just to wait and watch.
Rascal must have been surveying the back yard very thoroughly from his front door for he started immediately for my shallow, cemented, bait pond, always alive with minnows.
The edges of this pool slanted gradually toward the deeper central portion, making it convenient for my amazingly confident little raccoon. Without a moment's hesitation he waded in and began feeling all over the bottom, his sensitive prehensile fingers telling him all that he needed to know about this minnow pond. Meanwhile his eyes seemed to focus on the far horizon, as though eyes and hands were in no way connected. Shiners and chubs dashed frantically for safety, sometimes leaping clear of the water in their attempt to escape.
As Rascal methodically circled the pool on his first fishing expedition, I marveled that one so young, and with no mother to teach him, knew precisely the technique used by all other raccoons for catching minnows. I watched fascinated to see if some ancient wisdom stored within his brain would make his search successful. My answer came a moment later when those two clever little black hands seized a four-inch shiner. Then the washing ceremony began. Although the minnow was perfectly clean, Rascal sloshed it back and forth for several minutes before retiring to dry land to enjoy his meal-more delicious because he had caught this fish himself.
Seemingly satisfied with the one minnow, and aware he could catch more any time he wished, Rascal began a leisurely tour of the back yard, sniffing and feeling. There were interesting odors to be classified-odors of cat,

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Two speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Chapters

Headings

Features

Character traits

Character development

Complex character relationships

Complex Problem/Solution

Clear cause/effect

Simple Plot

First Person

Dialect/Accents

Topic

*Animals

Animals: Forest

Pets

Responsibility

Low Frequency Words

abused	accent	accommodation	additional	adjoined
advantages	affectionate	allowances	amazingly	amiably
anemones	anthropologist	artillery	assumed	awakening
badgered	balefully	bargain	bass	belfry
biologist	blessed	bough	brewing	casting
cautiously	cemented	ceremony	challenged	choir
chorus	chubs	companion	competent	complicated
concerned	concerning	confident	constantly	convenient
convincing	coons	corduroy	courteously	crawdads
crescent	critically	curiosity	currently	deacons
decaying	delaney	delegation	delicacies	delicious
dependence	despite	dialect	dignified	disgrace
dismay	disturbed	doubt	drooled	drooling
drowsing	earnest	eastern	ecstasy	edges
educated	eerie	elegance	enthusiasm	eventually
evicting	eviction	exceptionally	executed	expedition
faction	fascinated	fashion	fault	fitted
flowering	flush	fortune	foxfire	frantically
frenzy	funerals	furious	furry	further
generations	german	ghostly	glossy	goot
gracious	gradually	groves	guardian	guarding
hacking	handsome	hasenpfeffer	hazel	headlong
hereditary	herschel	hesitation	hickory	hollow
hooton	horizon	housewives	immediately	improvement
inadvisable	indefinitely	indignant	injustices	inquiring
instance	instinctively	insulted	intelligent	intruder
ishkabibble	iss	issue	jackknife	jeopardy
kegs	kildeer	knives	knocking	knowing
labor	laborious	lair	language	lawns
leisurely	lending	lilies	limb	linguist
litters	looted	loyally	luminescent	maneuver
marriage	marsh	marshy	marveled	meadows
meantime	meanwhile	meekly	merciful	merely
methodically	methodist	methodists	milking	minnesota
minnow	minnows	mischief	miserable	moisture
moment's	moonlight	moonrise	mournful	mournfully
mowing	muscled	muskrat	naked	naturally
nature	neighborhood	nestled	noble	northern
norwegian	novel	nuzzled	obeyed	objects
occasional	occupant	odors	orchard	outraged
overwhelmed	ownership	pamper	parishioners	parlor
parsonage	particular	particularly	partners	pastries
peered	peering	perpetually	personality	phosphorescent
phrase	pickerel	plainly	plaintive	pleasant
pleasure	pleasures	poet	portion	postgraduate
postpone	postponing	precisely	predictably	prehensile
presented	previous	prisoner's	process	productive
property	protective	prove	psychologist	published
quavering	quitter	racked	raging	raising
rascal	reacted	reasons	recent	render
research	resort	responsibility	responsible	restless
retiring	reverend	reward	ringtailed	romped
saint	saloonkeeper	satisfaction	satisfied	satisfying
saucer	scented	scramble	scrambling	screech
scruff	seasonal	seemingly	seized	seldom
semicircle	sensitive	sermon	service	services
seventy	shallow	shallows	shameful	shelves
shiners	shinnied	shinnies	shortened	signature
silvering	siree	skirted	slashing	slender
sloshed	snarling	somewhat	sorrow	sought
sounding	spirea	stairway	stance	sterling
substituted	suits	sunder	sunderland	sunderland's
surrounding	surveying	swamp	swearing	swedish
swiftly	swiftness	swiped	tangle	tangled
tasseled	taunted	technique	terrier	terrifying
theo	theological	thoroughly	tormentor	tour
trait	tremolo	trill	trundled	underfur
unimportant	unretractable	unweaned	upward	utter
vaguely	varmints	vell	verdammte	vere
victorian	vineyard	violence	violets	virtual
virtues	vot	wandering	wayfarers	weighed
wentworth's	whimpered	whimpering	whined	whipping
whittling	winnebago	wisdom	witless	woodchuck
woodchucks	wounding	woven	wowser	yearling
yelped