30 TRUE BEAR STORIES. 



bear family, but why the full-grown man 

 should so continually persist in caging this 

 shaggy-coated, dignified, kingly and an- 

 cient brother of his, I cannot see, unless it 

 is that he knows almost nothing at all of 

 his better nature, his shy, innocent love of 

 a joke, his partiality for music and his im- 

 perial disdain of death. And so, with a 

 desire that man may know a little more 

 about this storied and classic creature 

 which, with noiseless and stately tread, has 

 come down to us out of the past, and is as 

 quietly passing away from the face of the 

 earth, these fragmentary facts are set 

 down. But first as to his love of music. A 

 bear loves music better than he loves 

 honey, and that is saying that he loves 

 music better than he loves his life. 



We were going to mill, father and I, and 

 Lyte Howard, in Oregon, about forty years 

 ago, with ox-teams, a dozen or two bags of 

 wheat, threshed with a. flail and winnowed 

 with a wagon cover, and were camped for 

 the night by the Calipoola River; for it took 



