was a
success in every way, including the bear hunt; but in the case of the
bear hunt we only just made it successful and no more, for it was not
until the twelfth day of steady hunting that I got my bear. Then I shot
it in the most approved hunter's style, going up on it in a canebrake
as it made a walking bay before the dogs. I also killed a deer--more by
luck than anything else, as it was a difficult shot.

QUENTIN'S "EXQUISITE JEST"

White House, Jan. 2, 1908.

DEAR ARCHIE:

Friday night Quentin had three friends, including the little Taft
boy, to spend the night with him. They passed an evening and night of
delirious rapture, it being a continuous rough-house save when they
would fall asleep for an hour or two from sheer exhaustion. I interfered
but once, and that was to stop an exquisite jest of Quentin's, which
consisted in procuring sulphureted hydrogen to be used on the other boys
when they got into bed. They played hard, and it made me realize how old
I had grown and how very busy I had been these last few years, to
find that they had grown so that I was not needed in the play. Do you
recollect how we all of us used to play hide-and-go-seek in the White
House? and have obstacle races down the hall when you brought in your
friends?

Mother continues much attached to Scamp, who is certainly a cunning
little dog. He is very affectionate, but so exceedingly busy when we
are out on the grounds, that we only catch glimpses of him zigzagging at
full speed from one end of the place to the other. The kitchen cat and
he have strained relations but have not yet come to open hostility.

White House, Jan. 27, 1908.

DEAR ARCHIE:

Scamp is really a cunning little dog, but he takes such an extremely
keen interest in hunting, and is so active, that when he is out on the
grounds with us we merely catch glimpses of him as he flashes by. The
other night after the Judicial Reception when we went up-stairs to
supper the kitchen cat suddenly appeared parading down the hall with
great friendliness, and was forthwith exiled to her proper home again.

TOM PINCH

White House, February 23, 1908.

DEAREST KERMIT:

I quite agree with you about Tom Pinch. He is a despicable kind of
character; just the kind of character Dickens liked, because he had
himself a thick streak of maudlin sentimentality of the kind that, as
somebody phrased it, "made him wallow naked in the pathetic." It always
interests me about Dicke