of bear. The further study of it will be exceedingly
interesting. Meantime I will go off on a far expedition among the
forests of the north and make an exhaustive search. There must certainly
be another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it
has company of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will muzzle
this one first.

THREE MONTHS LATER.--It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no
success. In the mean time, without stirring from the home estate, she
has caught another one! I never saw such luck. I might have hunted these
woods a hundred years, I never would have run across that thing.

NEXT DAY.--I have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it
is perfectly plain that they are of the same breed. I was going to stuff
one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some
reason or other; so I have relinquished the idea, though I think it is
a mistake. It would be an irreparable loss to science if they should
get away. The old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like
a parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so
much, and having the imitative faculty in a high developed degree. I
shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot; and yet
I ought not to be astonished, for it has already been everything else it
could think of since those first days when it was a fish. The new one is
as ugly as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat
complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. She calls
it Abel.

TEN YEARS LATER.--They are BOYS; we found it out long ago. It was their
coming in that small immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to
it. There are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had stayed
a bear it would have improved him. After all these years, I see that I
was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside
the Garden with her than inside it without her. At first I thought
she talked too much; but now I should be sorry to have that voice fall
silent and pass out of my life. Blessed be the chestnut that brought us
near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the
sweetness of her spirit!

EVE'S DIARY

Translated from the Original

SATURDAY.--I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday.
That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if there was a
day-before-yesterday I was not ther