78 RECREATION. 
2 nnn 
MACE STONE AND THE BEAR. 
W. H. LIPPETTS. 
It was from Mace Stone himself that I 
heard the particulars of his famous wrestling 
match with a bear. It was an unpremedi- 
tated affair on the part of Mace. Although 
he emerged from the encounter consider- 
ably the worse for wear, he often remarked, 
“T larned that consarned critter a thing 
or 2 "bout back and squar holts that he 
didn’t know afore.” A 
Mace was so used to mixing truth with 
vivid imagination that it was sometimes 
hard to say just where the one began and 
the other ended. 
“It was all along of that cussed car- 
penter,” said Mace, when I had succeeded 
in loosening the floodgates of his_ elo- 
quence. “That ornery critter was always 
getting into scrapes and then howlin’ like a 
house afire for some one to get him out. 
You see it was this way: Me and the car- 
penter went out huntin’ one day. We didn't 
know what we was huntin’ for, but we was 
huntin’ and by gum, we found something 
we wasn’t lookin’ for. We got over to 
Baldwin in time to catch the steamer 71- 
conderoga, and made a bargain with Cap- 
tain Frank White to land us at what there 
was left of the old Horicon hotel pier at 
the foot of Black mountain. 
“We picked our way ashore over the rot- 
ten planks some way or other, and turned 
off to the South so as to come out on the 
rocks back of Paradise bay. The carpenter 
was ahead. Him and me was travlin’ slow- 
ly, not witchin’ for much of anythin’. All 
of a sudden the carpenter went out of sight; 
I heard a thundering big thump and then a 
thundering big yell. 
“That cuss had leather lungs I reckon. 
You could have heard him from one end of 
the lake to t’other. I knew there was trouble 
ahead, and not stopping to think I rushed 
forward and in 2 jerks of a lamb’s tail I 
come down in the middle of as pretty a muss 
as any one not a durned fool could hope to 
see. 
“There was the carpenter, flat on his 
back and over him a whoppin’ big black 
b’ar. The b’ar was a-settin’ on his 
haunches, lookin’ kinder surprised at the 
lot of noise that cum frum such a small 
man as that carpenter.. Well, I no sooner 
landed than that cussed skunk of a car- 
penter up and sloped, leavin’ me to tackle 
the critter alone. Before I could ketch my 
breath, the b’ar fetched my arm a clip that 
sent my rifle sailin’ out into the bay where 
the water was 20 foot deep. Then he caught 
me a slap aside of the head that made me 
see heavens’ full of stars. By that time I 
had got my dander up, and we went at it 
hammer and tongs. Meanwhile the car- 
penter had shinned up a tree and was givin’ 
me all sorts of advice. 
“‘Give it to him, Mace,’ he yelled; ‘soak 
him once for me.’ Soak him; Great Scott! 
I’d agiven half a dollar to have soaked the 
carpenter just once about then. Talk about 
soakin’ the b’ar; he had more science than 
Sullivan ever had. I managed to get out 
my knife, but before I could use it, it was 
knocked out of my hand and over the bushes 
to keep company with my rifle in the bay. 
“*Yer gol darned fool,’ I shouted to the 
carpenter, ‘come down out of that tree, pick 
up yer rifle and shoot the brute.’ 
“*Your all right,’ says the carpenter, ‘T’ll 
stay where I am and let you finish him.’ 
“He was a miserable sort of a cuss, that 
carpenter. He had no more pluck in him 
than a 7 day old kitten. There he set up 
in the air, clutchin’ the branch he was sit- 
tin’ on and lookin’ down on me and the b’ar 
as though it was a paid show and he had 
a reserved seat. 
“All that time me and the b’ar was a- 
havin’ it. We went round and round, and 
the dust flew. Sometimes I was on top and 
then the b’ar was. After cussin’ and rastlin’ 
awhile I got the critter where I wanted him, 
and by a sort of a double back-action twist 
I lifted and threw him clean over my head. 
He lit kinder stunned like. By the time he 
had got back his thinkin’ faculties I ketched 
hold of the carpenter’s rifle and sent a bali 
through the b’ar’s ugly head. 
“Then I looked at myself. I was a sight. 
When I started out in the mornin’ I wore 
tolorably good lookin’ clothers. Now my 
coat was clawed off my back and my pants 
was in ribbons. There wasn’t enough 
thread in Ticonderoga to have mended that 
suit. 
“The carpenter cum down from the tree 
and begun to make all sorts of comments 
about my appearance. He said I would 
make a good scarecrow and he’d hire me 
to stand in his corn lot the rest of the fall. 
He made me so consarned mad that I 
walked over to where he was standin’ and 
fetched him a clip on the jaw that laid him 
out apparently as dead as a nit. 
“T left, thinkin’ I’d killed him for sure, 
but when I got back to Ti., there he was 
before me, and had sworn out a warrant, 
chargin’ me with assault with intent to kill. 
I said he got the clip in the jaw from the 
b’ar in the beginnin’ of the trouble, and then 
up and told them all how he had acted dur- 
in’ the fight. The judge threw the case out 
of court. ; 
He—Why are some girls so fond of bath- 
ing that they are on the beach all day, while 
others can’t be induced to go near the 
water? 
She—Oh, it’s simply a matter of form.— 
Exchange. 

ae re eer es ee 
SO MIIIEE 3 es nos asa 0 ad eee 1 drunk, 
1 drunk..... <4.0 5 Cine Saas Io days 
—Life 
RECREATION is the best of books. I do 
not know how any one who loves hunting, 
fishing, or camping can afford to be with- 
out it. 
-G. E. Kinsley, Lanesboro, Pa. 
