THE SEVEN SLEEPERS 181 



that bear again. Probably he laughed himself to 

 death. 



The blackbear is undoubtedly leather-lined, for 

 he will dig up and eat the bulbs of the jack-in-the- 

 pulpit, which affect a human tongue I speak from 

 knowledge like a mixture of nitric acid and 

 powdered glass. Moreover, he is the only animal 

 which can swallow the tight-rolled green cigars of 

 the skunk-cabbage in the early spring. An entry in 

 my nature-notes reads as follows : 



"Only a fool or a bear would taste skunk-cabbage." 



My lips were blistered and my tongue swollen 

 when I wrote it. The fact that the blackbear and the 

 blackcat or fisher are the only two mammals which 

 can eat Old Man Quill-Pig, alias porcupine, and 

 swallow his quills, confirms my belief as to the bear's 

 lining. The dog, the lynx, the wild cat, and the 

 wolf have all tried and died. 



Last spring, in northern Pennsylvania I found 

 myself on the top of a mountain, by the side of one 

 of those trembling bogs locally known as bear- 

 sloughs. There I had highly resolved to find the nest 

 of a nearby Nashville warbler, which kept singing its 

 song, which begins like a black-and-white warbler 

 and ends like a chipping sparrow. I did not suppose 

 that there was a bear within fifty miles of me. 

 Suddenly I came upon a large, quaking-aspen tree 

 set back in the woods by the side of the bog. Its 

 smooth bark was furrowed by a score of deep scratches 

 and ridges about five feet from the ground, while 

 above them the tree had apparently been repeatedly 



