rm.

"Tommy Dermott," I said, when I had got my nerves back somewhat. "Tommy
Dermott, I'm going to lay you across my knee and give you the greatest
thrashing a boy ever got in the world's history."

"No, you don't," he answered, squirming around. "You said you wouldn't
if I held on tight."

"That's all right," I said, "but I'm going to, just the same. The
fellows who go up in balloons are bad, unprincipled men, and I'm going
to give you a lesson right now to make you stay away from them, and from
balloons, too."

And then I gave it to him, and if it wasn't the greatest thrashing in
the world, it was the greatest he ever got.

But it took all the grit out of me, left me nerve-broken, that
experience. I canceled the engagement with the street railway company,
and later on went in for gas. Gas is much the safer, anyway.

BALD-FACE

"Talkin' of bear----"

The Klondike King paused meditatively, and the group on the hotel porch
hitched their chairs up closer.

"Talkin' of bear," he went on, "now up in the Northern Country there are
various kinds. On the Little Pelly, for instance, they come down that
thick in the summer to feed on the salmon that you can't get an Indian
or white man to go nigher than a day's journey to the place. And up
in the Rampart Mountains there's a curious kind of bear called the
'side-hill grizzly.' That's because he's traveled on the side-hills ever
since the Flood, and the two legs on the down-hill side are twice as
long as the two on the up-hill. And he can out-run a jack rabbit when he
gets steam up. Dangerous? Catch you! Bless you, no. All a man has to do
is to circle down the hill and run the other way. You see, that throws
mister bear's long legs up the hill and the short ones down. Yes, he's a
mighty peculiar creature, but that wasn't what I started in to tell
about.

"They've got another kind of bear up on the Yukon, and his legs are all
right, too. He's called the bald-face grizzly, and he's jest as big as
he is bad. It's only the fool white men that think of hunting him.
Indians got too much sense. But there's one thing about the bald-face
that a man has to learn: he never gives the trail to mortal creature.
If you see him comin', and you value your skin, you get out of his path.
If you don't, there's bound to be trouble. If the bald-face met Jehovah
Himself on the trail, he'd not give him an inch. O, he's a selfish
beggar, take my word for it. But I had to learn all thi