de heart's "Canayen" on our body an' dat's warm enough for true!
An' w'en All-ba-nee was got lonesome for travel all roun' de worl'
I hope she'll come home, lak de bluebird, an' again be de Chambly girl!

[Footnote 1: From "The Habitant and Other French Canadian Poems," by
William Henry Drummond. Copyright 1897 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]

COLONEL STERETT'S PANTHER HUNT

BY ALFRED HENRY LEWIS

"Panthers, what we-all calls 'mountain lions,'" observed the Old
Cattleman, wearing meanwhile the sapient air of him who feels equipped
of his subject, "is plenty furtive, not to say mighty sedyoolous to
skulk. That's why a gent don't meet up with more of 'em while pirootin'
about in the hills. Them cats hears him, or they sees him, an' him still
ignorant tharof; an' with that they bashfully withdraws. Which it's to
be urged in favor of mountain lions that they never forces themse'fs on
no gent; they're shore considerate, that a-way, an' speshul of
themse'fs. If one's ever hurt, you can bet it won't be a accident.
However, it ain't for me to go 'round impugnin' the motives of no
mountain lion; partic'lar when the entire tribe is strangers to me
complete. But still a love of trooth compels me to concede that if
mountain lions ain't cowardly, they're shore cautious a lot. Cattle an'
calves they passes up as too bellicose, an' none of 'em ever faces any
anamile more warlike than a baby colt or mebby a half-grown deer. I'm
ridin' along the Caliente once when I hears a crashin' in the bushes on
the bluff above--two hundred foot high, she is, an' as sheer as the
walls of this yere tavern. As I lifts my eyes, a fear-frenzied mare an'
colt comes chargin' up an' projects themse'fs over the precipice an'
lands in the valley below. They're dead as Joolius Caesar when I rides
onto 'em, while a brace of mountain lions is skirtin' up an' down the
aige of the bluff they leaps from, mewin' an' lashin' their long tails
in hot enthoosiasm. Shore, the cats has been chasin' the mare an' foal,
an' they locoes 'em to that extent they don't know where they're headin'
an' makes the death jump I relates. I bangs away with my six-shooter,
but beyond givin' the mountain lions a convulsive start I can't say I
does any execootion. They turns an' goes streakin' it through the pine
woods like a drunkard to a barn raisin'.

"Timid? Shore! They're that timid, seminary girls compared to 'em is as
sternly courageous as a passel of buccaneers. Out i