THE BIG BEAR OF ARKANSAS. fai) 
and good-natured to simplicity. Then his perfect con- 
fidence in himself was irresistibly droll. 
‘Prehaps,” said he, ‘‘ gentlemen,” running on without 
a person interrupting, ‘‘ prehaps you have been to New 
Orleans often; I never made the first visit before, and 
I don’t intend to make another in a crow’s life. I am 
thrown away in that ar place, and useless, that ar a fact. 
Some of the gentlemen thar called me green—well, pre- 
haps I am, said I, but IT arn’t so at home; and if I aint 
off my trail much, the heads of them perlite chaps them- 
selves wern’t much the hardest; for according to my 
notion, they were veal know-nothings, green as a pump- 
kin-vine—couldn’t, in farming, [’ll bet, raise a crop of 
turnips; and as for shooting, they’d miss a barn if the 
door was swinging, and that, too, with the best rifle in 
the country. And then they talked to me ’bout hunt- 
ing, and laughed at my calling the principal game in 
Arkansaw poker, and high-low-jack. 
‘“<Prehaps,’ said I, ‘you prefer checkers and roulette;’ 
at this they laughed harder than ever, and asked me if 
T lived in the woods, and didn’t know what game was? 
“ At this, I rather think J laughed. 
“* Yes,’ I roared, and says, I, ‘Strangers, if you’d 
asked me how we got our meat in Arkansaw, I’d a told 
you at once, and given you a list of varmints that would 
make a caravan, beginning with the bar, and ending off 
with the cat; that’s meat though, not game. 
“Game, indeed,—that’s what city folks call it; and 
