METAPHYSICS OF BEAR HUNTING. 367 
nature’s sweet—’” Sleep, indeed! I fear I shall never go 
to sleep again. I find I shall have to take care of myself, 
and see fair play. Things are almost getting serious. 
Just to think how long that panther’s teeth were! He 
keeps them very white, considering ! 
I wonder if its daylight up in old Kentuck now, and what 
they are all doing. That good old man is trimming grape 
vines. He has prayed for me this morning. He can pray! 
And the girls,—weeding flowers, I warrant. And Willie, 
that glorious boy, with the seraph struggling through his 
great eyes,—pranking! pranking! like an elf. That's a 
catamount mewing ; how soft his voice is—butter wouldn’t 
melt in his mouth. Confound this drowsy fit—I had like to 
have fallen. This nodding “’twixt earth and sky” is rather 
more serious than, in my college days, I considered Homeric 
nods to be. ‘ 
At it again down there! ‘Celestial Syren’s harmonies !” 
you are discord to it! Howling, growling, snarling, yelling, 
spitting, snapping—whew! how the bones crack—sweet- 
tempered family these Felines! They are giving each other 
farewell salutes and embraces—affectionate creatures ! 
But, thank Fate! it is the order of nature that day must 
come, though it does seem to be a hundred years. And it 
has come at last. The wassailers of the night, striped, 
dotted, frecked, spotted, one and all, shrink away with 
mean, guilty looks, while 
a 
“The morn, in russet mantle clad, 
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.” 
Those surly panthers, though, unwilling to go, stop in full 
view under an oak, to lick their paws, and are looking back 
wistfully as if they would have thanked daylight to tarry yet 
awhile. But it will not do, you are not Joshuas, and the sun 
can’t stand still for your convenience. Good-by! When you 
