THE SEVEN SLEEPERS 177 



The Chipmunk and the Woodchuck, 



The Skunk, who's slow but sure, 

 The ringed Raccoon, who hates the moon, 



Have found for cold the cure. 



Something of the lives of these our brethren of 

 the wild I have tried to set forth here — because I 

 care for them all. 



First comes the slyest, the shyest, and the stillest 

 of the Seven — the blackbear, who yet dwells among 

 men when his old-time companions, the timber- wolf 

 and the panther, have been long gone. Silent as a 

 shadow, he is with us far oftener than we know. 

 Only a few years ago bears were found in New Jersey, 

 in dense cedar-swamps, unsuspected by a generation 

 of near-by farmers. In Pennsylvania and New York 

 they are increasing, and I have no doubt that they 

 can still be found in parts of New England, from 

 which they are supposed to have disappeared a half- 

 century ago. In fact, it is always unsafe to say that 

 any of the wild-folk have gone forever. I have lived 

 to see a herd of seven Virginia deer feeding in my 

 neighbor's cabbage-patch in Connecticut, although 

 neither my father nor my grandfather ever saw a 

 wild deer in that state. In that same township I 

 once had a fleeting glimpse of an otter, and only last 

 winter, within thirty miles of Philadelphia, I located 

 a colony of beaver. 



The blackbear is nearly as black as a blacksnake, 

 whose color is as perfect a standard of absolute black 

 on earth as El Nath is of white among the stars. 



