42 The Black Bear 



ten or twelve feet of old garden hose. This he would 

 seize in his teeth by the middle and shake it as a dog 

 would shake a snake until the ends fairly snapped. 

 Once, when he had hold of the hose, I put my mouth 

 to one end and called through it. He was all attention 

 at once and when I called again he took the opposite 

 end in his paws, seated himself squarely on the ground, 

 and held one eye to the opening to see where the sound 

 came from. This sitting down to things was charac- 

 teristic of him. He would never do anything that he 

 could sit down to until he had deliberately settled him- 

 self in that comfortable position. A mirror was a great 

 puzzle to him and he never fully solved the riddle of 

 where the other bear kept himself. He would stand 

 in front and look at his reflection, then try to touch it 

 with his paw. Finding the glass in the road, he would 

 tip the mirror forward and look behind it; then start 

 in and walk several times around it, trying to catch up 

 with the illusive bear. 



But Ben^s desire to catch the looking-glass bear was 

 as nothing to his determination to catch the kitchen 

 cat. This was his supreme ambition, and, although 

 he never realized it, there was one occasion on which 

 he came within sight of success. When he was a 

 small cub and admitted familiarly to the house he had 

 often chased the cat around the kitchen until everything 

 had been upset except the stove; or until the cat, 

 watching her chance, had escaped to the woodshed to 



