108 NEIGHBORS WITH CLAWS AND HOOFS. 



genuine excitement the natives. It was a no-mistake bear, 

 by George ! And the hero of the fight well, I will not 

 insist upon that. But what a procession that was carrying 

 the bear home ! and what a congregation was speedily 

 gathered in the valley to see the bear ! Our best preacher 

 up there never drew anything like it on Sunday. 



IT. And I must say that my friends who were sports- 

 men behaved very well, on the whole. They didn't deny 

 that it was a bear, although they said it was small for a 

 bear. Mr. Drane, who is equally good with a rifle or rod, 

 admitted that it was a very fair shot. But he needlessly 

 remarked, after he had examined the wound in the bear, 

 that he had seen that kind of shot made by a cow's horn. 

 This kind of talk affected me not. When I went to sleep 

 that night, my last delicious thought was, " I've killed a 



bear 1 " 



Charles Dudley Warner. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

 THE BEAR IN FABLE AND STORY. 



1. THE bear is so well known that he forms an im- 

 portant character in myth and fable, and enters largely 

 into the common stories or folk-lore of the people in most 

 countries and ages. In the mythology of the Norsemen 

 he is made strong, majestic, and terrible, the god of 

 thunder, the bear-king of storms. The tempest-demons, 

 black-bearded, are his children, and the thunder-clouds go 

 rolling and soaring and foaming overhead, bears every 

 one of them, and close on the heels of their prey. In 

 the East the bear is the shining one, the luminous sky. 

 The Russian child hears, at the fireside, stories of the bear, 

 in which he is shaggy and terrible, every hair of which is 



