Haw I Killed a Bear. 821 



still, puzzled me. Many people use a shot-gun for partridges. I 

 prefer the rifle : it makes a clean job of death, and does not prema- 

 turely stuff the bird with globules of lead. The rifle was a Sharp's, 

 carrying a ball-cartridge (ten to the pound), an excellent weapon 

 belonging to a friend of mine, who had intended, for a good many 

 years back, to kill a deer with it. He could hit a tree with it — if the 

 wind did not blow, and the atmosphere was just right, and the tree 

 was not too far off — nearly every time. Of course, the tree must 

 have some size. Needless to say that I was at that time no sports- 

 man. Years ago, I killed a robin under the most humiliating cir- 

 cumstances. The bird was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a big 

 shot-gun pretty full, crept up under the tree, rested the gun on the 

 fence, with the muzzle more than ten feet from the bird, shut both 

 eyes, and pulled the trigger. When I got up to see what had hap- 

 pened, the robin was scattered about under the tree in more than a 

 thousand pieces, no one of which was big enough to enable a natu- 

 ralist to decide from it to what species it belonged. This disgusted 

 me with the life of a sportsman. I mention the incident to show 

 that, although I went blackberry ing armed, there was not much 

 inequality between me and the bear. 



In this blackberry-patch bears had been seen. The summer 

 before, our colored cook, accompanied by a little girl of the vicinage, 

 was picking berries there one day, when a bear came out of the 

 woods and walked toward them. The girl took to her heels 

 and escaped. Aunt Chloe was paralyzed with terror. Instead of 

 attempting to run, she sat down on the ground where she was stand- 

 ing, and began to weep and scream, giving herself up for lost. The 

 bear was bewildered by this conduct. He approached and looked at 

 her; he walked around and surveyed her. Probably he had never 

 seen a colored person before, and did not know whether she would 

 agree with him ; at any rate, after watching her a few moments, he 

 turned about and went into the forest. This is an authentic instance 

 of the delicate consideration of a bear, and is much more remarkable 

 than the 'forbearance toward the African slave of the well-known 

 lion, because the bear had no thorn in his foot. 



When I had climbed the hill, I set up my rifle against a tree, and 

 began picking berries, lured <>n from bush to bush by the black 

 gleam of fruit (that always promises more in the distance than it 



~,2\ 



