rifle against a tree, and
began picking berries, lured on from bush to bush by the black gleam of
fruit (that always promises more in the distance than it realizes when
you reach it); penetrating farther and farther, through leaf-shaded
cow-paths flecked with sunlight, into clearing after clearing. I could
hear on all sides the tinkle of bells, the cracking of sticks, and
the stamping of cattle that were taking refuge in the thicket from the
flies. Occasionally, as I broke through a covert, I encountered a meek
cow, who stared at me stupidly for a second, and then shambled off into
the brush. I became accustomed to this dumb society, and picked on in
silence, attributing all the wood noises to the cattle, thinking nothing
of 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