THE BIG BEAR OF ARKANSAS. 7 
somewhat troublesome. But, stranger, they never stick 
twice in the same place; and give them a fair chance 
for a few months, and you will get as much above no- 
ticmg them as an alligator. They can’t hurt my feel- 
ings, for they lay under the skin ; and I never knew but 
one case of injury resulting from them, and that was to 
a Yankee: and they take worse to foreigners, any how, 
than they do to natives. But the way they used that 
fellow up! first they punched him until he swelled up 
and busted; then he sup-per-a-ted, as the doctor called 
it, until he was as raw as beef; then, owing to the 
warm weather, he tuck the ager, and finally he tuck a 
steamboat and left the country. He was the only man 
that ever tuck mosquitoes at heart that I knowd of. 
‘But mosquitoes is natur, and I never find fault 
with her. If they ar large, Arkansaw is large, her var- 
mints ar large, her trees ar large, her rivers ar large, 
and a small mosquito would be of no more use in Ar- 
kansaw than preaching in a cane-brake.”’ 
This knock-down argument in favor of big mos- 
quitoes used the Hoosier up, and the logician started 
on a new track, to explain how numerous bear were in 
his “‘ diggins,” where he represented them to be “ about 
as plenty as blackberries, and a little plentifuller.” 
Upon the utterance of this assertion, a timid little 
man near me inquired, if the bear in Arkansaw ever 
attacked the settlers in numbers ? 
“No,” said our hero, warming with the subject, “no, 
