any real bear. In point of fact,
however, I was thinking all the time of a nice romantic bear, and as I
picked, was composing a story about a generous she-bear who had lost
her cub, and who seized a small girl in this very wood, carried her
tenderly off to a cave, and brought her up on bear's milk and honey.
When the girl got big enough to run away, moved by her inherited
instincts, she escaped, and came into the valley to her father's house
(this part of the story was to be worked out, so that the child would
know her father by some family resemblance, and have some language in
which to address him), and told him where the bear lived. The father
took his gun, and, guided by the unfeeling daughter, went into the
woods and shot the bear, who never made any resistance, and only, when
dying, turned reproachful eyes upon her murderer. The moral of the
tale was to be kindness to animals.

I was in the midst of this tale when I happened to look some rods
away to the other edge of the clearing, and there was a bear! He was
standing on his hind legs, and doing just what I was doing,--picking
blackberries. With one paw he bent down the bush, while with the
other he clawed the berries into his mouth,--green ones and all. To
say that I was astonished is inside the mark. I suddenly discovered
that I didn't want to see a bear, after all. At about the same
moment the bear saw me, stopped eating berries, and regarded me with
a glad surprise. It is all very well to imagine what you would do
under such circumstances. Probably you wouldn't do it: I didn't.
The bear dropped down on his forefeet, and came slowly towards me.
Climbing a tree was of no use, with so good a climber in the rear.
If I started to run, I had no doubt the bear would give chase; and
although a bear cannot run down hill as fast as he can run up hill,
yet I felt that he could get over this rough, brush-tangled ground
faster than I could.

The bear was approaching. It suddenly occurred to me how I could
divert his mind until I could fall back upon my military base. My
pail was nearly full of excellent berries, much better than the bear
could pick himself. I put the pail on the ground, and slowly backed
away from it, keeping my eye, as beast-tamers do, on the bear. The
ruse succeeded.

The bear came up to the berries, and stopped. Not accustomed to eat
out of a pail, he tipped it over, and nosed about in the fruit,
"gorming" (if there is such a word) it down, mixed w