A hunter's life. 301 



ontil we stopped and waited for them to come up with us ; 

 theu they would make a kind of purring noise, ruhhing 

 round our legs, hunting some place to nestle in and lay 

 down I put them in the bosom of my hunting-shirt, and 

 carried them to our camp, where I laid all night with them 

 in my bosom ; and in the morning we set out for home, 

 with the carcasses of three grown bears and the two live 

 cubs. 



When we got home, we fed the cubs with new milk, aud 

 *vere at no trouble to raise them, until one broke his chain 

 and ran away, and I never heard of him again. When 

 the other was about a year old, my sons took him to 

 Funkstown, in Washington County, and sold him to a Mr. 

 Peters, who was a good rifleman. He kept Cuffee until 

 he was two years old, when he put him up at shooting- 

 matches, and won him several times himself, until he made 

 forty dollars off him ; after which, poor Cuffee was butch- 

 ered and divided among the sportsmen. 



After the sports of that spring were over, I was closely 

 engaged with my farming and milling, until September, 

 when the leaves began to turn yellow. My little Mary, 

 who was then perhaps forty or forty-five years old, and 

 still retained her beauty, vigor, and cheerfulness, although 

 the mother of eleven children, told me that I must kill 

 either a sheep or a deer, for we had no fresh meat. 



"Well, Mary," said I, "a deer killed is a sheep saved, 

 and I will try my hand ; but I have been so long without 

 practice, that, if I see a deer, I shall scarcely know which 

 end of the gun to put foremost." 



"Well," said she, " as you hunt, when you come to good 

 places, keep saying to yourself, ' Little end foremost, little 

 end foremost ; ' and when you see a deer, think of ' little 

 end foremost/ and all will come to you again." 



After this pleasant joke, I took my gun, and started off 

 ^th my dog to the woods. I had about eight or ten 

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