t)Ec. 23, tgos-j 
FORESt And StREAM 
i09 
thing he did. The next morning he started early under 
the belief that he must put in a longer day. 
Some time in the morning, he is uncertain as to the 
time, he struck a brook that was six or eight feet across. 
He said he knew that if he followed down this brook 
he would get “somewhere.” At i o’clock he came to a 
deserted lumber camp, where there were four or five 
cabins in various states of subsidence and decay. He 
picked out a small one, made a hole through the roof, 
and gathered wood. He did not feel as hungry as the 
day before, but felt very sleepy and a little weak. While 
gathering wood he saw two red squirrels and wasted 
three of his cartridges without killing either one, but he 
was not the least bit frightened, and, in fact, was rather 
enjoying his experience, especially since he found the 
brook and the cabins. In searching through the cabins 
he found a large lump of rock salt, very brown and dirty, 
in one of the buildings which had probably been a stable 
for oxen. This he brought intO' the cabin he intended to 
occupy and amused himself by crushing it up fine wuth a 
club to use if he succeeded in getting any more meat. 
While he was quite warm during that night, he was 
still more uncomfortable than either of the previous 
nights, and said that he was nervous and that his feet 
twitched so that he did not. get much sleep. Very early 
the next morning he started down the road and walked 
constantly until about ii in the forenoon, when he saw 
another man coming up the road. During the storm 
there had been about eight inches of snow, but no more 
after the morning of the second day. 
Now, the proof that he was not frightened and not in- 
sane and that his mind worked normally is shown by the 
story afterward told by this man he met. This man said 
that he saw my friend walking leisurely toward him. 
His clothing was not disarranged and there was nothing 
in his manner to indicate that he was lost, hungry, and in 
a desperate condition. The stranger 'saluted him with 
“Good morning, have you seen any traces?” My friend 
replied, “No.” The other man said: “When did you 
come in?” My friend replied: “A while ago.” He said: 
“Where did you come from?” My friend said, “Vance- 
boro.” The stranger then remarked : “I think the camp 
must be in this direction,” indicating a point at his right 
hand. The lost man said, “Yes,” and without further talk, 
they started in that direction. They walked about four 
miles, and during the last half-mile my friend was very 
weak, so much so that it was noticed by the stranger. 
Upon reaching the camp he was surrounded by all his 
companions, who shook his hand violently and addressed 
most of their questions to the stranger, asking him where 
did he find him? How did he find him? etc. Not until 
then did the stranger suspect that my young friend had 
been lost or that he was the very man he had been hunt- 
ing for. For the members of the party had sent back to 
Vanceboro a guide and obtained other men to come from 
the town and hunt the woods. 
In speaking of his experience afterward he always 
maintained that his recollection of the directions' given 
by Nessmuk, the light way in which Nessmuk regarded 
being lost, and the definite instructions to build camps 
in case of being lost, saved him from becoming panic- 
stricken, and that his experience was rather pleasant 
than otherwise. Edward French. 
The Gentleman in the Woods. 
The. perfect gentleman is always welcome in society, 
wherever he goes. The homes of the cultured and 
refined and v/ell to do, as well as of the humble and 
lowly, are constantly open to him, and there is ever 
a place for him at their firesides. From time out of 
mind it has been so, and always will. Say what you 
may, humanity is ever quick to recognize and ap- 
preciate courtesy,, and gentleness and amiability, and 
such never goes without its reward. These qualities 
are always at a premium, and he who possesses them 
ranks with the nobility. The gentleman is always in 
demand. He is wanted, everywhere. He wins atten- 
tion wherever he goes. The heart opens to him like 
the rose to the sun, and the open hand of friendship 
is continually outstretched to him. 
Even wdien he turns his back upon society and 
plunges into the solitude of the woods, the result is 
precisely the same. Nature receives him with open 
arms, too, and all that she has is his. She loves to 
commune with him, conforming herself to his mood, 
no matter what it may be. She tells him all her 
secrets, many of them precious and long withheld, and 
seeks by many wiles to keep him in her company. He 
comes and goes in her domain as he pleases, and she is 
always at his beck and call. 
But the case is much different with the rough and 
boisterous, the boor and the thoughtless. She flees 
at their first approach, and little indeed do they have 
in common. She will have nothing to do with such, 
and would have them well out of the way. If they are 
not wanted in society, neither are they here. If you 
would be heartily received into the inner circles of the 
woods, you must enter them precisely as you would a 
drawing room; as a perfect gentleman. 
Have you never stood upon some high hill and 
listened and watched while some chance party of visitors 
to the woods made their way through them? Often 
they can be heard for miles, their shouts and gruff 
voices ringing through the woods, and echoing far and 
near. You will see the birds leaving and flying away 
in flocks in alarm before them. Now and then an un- 
usually saucy specimen, like a crow or jay, will stop 
to scold at them a bit, but takes good care, nevertheless, 
to be well out of the way before they are within half 
a mile or so. Frightened animals can be heard scurry- 
ing away to safety through the woods, from their in- 
tended path, long before their arrival; and should you 
fall in and follow in their course, you would find the 
vicinity devastated of life of every kind, as though 
swept by fire, or invaded by a terrible ogre, for such 
the noisy man seems invariably to be, to the wood 
dwellers. They cannot conceive of him as anything else. 
But if you go into the woods as a perfect gentleman, 
then the case becomes quite different, and all the wood 
folk are anxious to meet you and make your ac- 
quaintance. They cannot see enough of you, and are 
ready to devote unlimited time to your company. Go 
quietly into the woods, sometime, and sit down under 
the nut trees, and soon the squirrels will gather around, 
and begin to hail you and exchange greetings with you. 
If they find you sufficiently gentlemanly, they will 
actually come down out of the trees and shake hands 
with you, not exactly after the formal, pump-handle 
fashion of society, but more literally shake hands at 
you, as well . as heads and tails, to attract your at- 
tention, and make their way into your good graces. 
Always provided that they find you a perfect gentle- 
man, but not otherwise. 
One motion of hand or head, or intimation of any 
kind that you are not perfectly trustworthy, and they 
are away in an instant, and will not have anything more 
to do with you, under any circumstances. They have 
then made up their mind about you, and it is not easily 
to be changed. 
Once while I was walking in the woods with a cele- 
brated naturalist, we fell in with a sportsman out after 
birds. We could hear him coming some distance 
away, shouting at his dogs, and whistling and scolding. 
“Had any luck?” my friend asked, as he came up. 
“No!” was the indignant reply, “I never saw such a 
place, anyway! There aren’t any birds around here! 
Might as well look for ’em on top of a flagstaff as 
here!” and on he went, muttering and cursing over hi-'? 
ill luck. 
“Just for the fun of it, let’s see whether there are an> 
birds here or not!” continued my companion, after the 
gunner was out of sight and hearing, and turning into 
the bush, we sat down for a time on a fallen log, and 
waited and listened. It was not long before we could 
hear the well-known drumming of a grouse, doubtless 
a young bird, trying his hand at this fascinating oc- 
cupation with him. 
Have you never sat down for' a brief rest in the 
woods, and upon rising been startled by the roaring 
wings of a flushing grouse? 'And have you not thought 
it a bit strange that you should have happened to sit ■ 
down so near to one of these birds, and that, too, with- 
out having frightened him away? Ah, but you had 
but little inkling into the true meaning of the affair! 
He was not there at all, when you sat down, but hav- 
ing heard or seen you, he crept up to have a look at 
you, mayhap in the hope of making your acquaintance, 
if you appeared to be of the right sort, and in the close- 
ness of his proximity to you, you may read his candid 
opinion of you, see yourself reflected in the eye of a 
grouse, as you would in a glass! 
Birds of all kinds love the company of the gentleman 
after their own heart. Instances of this fact are to 
be seen daily. I once visited a. hermit living in a 
lonely cabin on the side of a mountain. After showing 
me about the place, he stepped inside for a moment 
and brought out a dish of corn meal porridge. Then 
he began calling at the top of his voice, “Charley!” 
“John!” “Jerry!” 
Almost immediately the air seemed to be filled with 
crows. Black forms came flitting down from the tree- 
tops, far and near, lighting on the arms and shoulders 
of my host, and standing by twos and threes on his 
head. It was dinner time for them, and they ate the 
contents of the dish with a. relish. 
After they had finished, the hermit inyited me to 
come in and sit down awhile, which we accordingly 
did. But it was only with the greatest difficulty that 
we could keep the crows from entering also. Gladly 
would they have been counted as guests also on that 
occasion, if opportunity had offered. “Sometimes on 
rainy days I let them come in to keep out of the 
wet,” was the explanation offered of their eagerness to 
follow, but a second might be found also in the fact 
that birds, as well as men, love good company. 
Thoreau, the eccentric hermit of Walden Pond, re- 
lates that while floating in his boat on the pond, if 
he only went about it in gentle enough fashion, the 
fishes would allow him to place his hand cautiously 
under them, and lift them out of the water, 
r r I,t is a familiar legend, how Saint Francis of Assizi is 
said to have gone to the woods on one occasion to 
preach to the birds; and came away uplifted in soul 
and elated in spirit, not through the success of his mis- 
sion, which had proved a failure, but because instead 
the birds had preached to him! What an opportunity 
it was for all the songsters of the woods! Not often 
did they have the chance of falling in with such a real 
gentleman as he! No wonder that they sang to him 
their sweetest and best, and that his soul was raised to 
loftiest heights! Well may we imagine that not a 
moment of his stay was lost! He came with the 
best intentions, and deserved none but the best. He 
was repaid an hundred fold in his own sterling coin. 
Similarly, anyone who goes to the woods with all 
the qualifications of the perfect gentle-man, will be I'e- 
ceived by nature with outstretched hand, and will de- 
part with the happiest of recollections ringing in his 
heart. R. B. Buckham. 
The Biography of a Bear.— XIL 
After hanging up the deer that I had carried until I 
figured that it ought to be worth a dollar a pound, I pro- 
ceeded to investigate the apparent ruin of the tent and 
the general chaos surrounding it. I found that the up- 
right poles had been thrown over sidewise and the pegs, 
to which the side ropes were made fast, had been pulled 
out of the ground. The whole tent had been dragged 
along the ground from one corner, leaving it fast to one 
or two stakes only. All of our blankets had been dragged 
about and distributed generally and indiscriminately over 
about four acres of ground. Our pillows, coats, in- fact, 
everything that was in the tent when we left it in the 
morning was strewn about as though each separate article 
had received special attention, and had then been de- 
posited off by itself. Our improvised wash stand, our 
water pail, our combs and brushes and our mirror were 
all upon the ground and more or less covered with grass 
from the tent. 
I next went with a great deal of solicitude to examine 
the hut in which our provisions were stored. I found 
the door ajar, for its fastenings, consisting of a strap 
hooked over a nail, offered little resistance to anything 
or any person bent upon raiding it. I was greatly re- 
lieved to find that nothing within the hut had been dis- 
turbed. Even our tin plates and the remnants from our 
breakfast, that we had not taken time to clear away in 
tiic iiiuiiijiig, were unuisrurDea. x retumea 10 rne wreck- 
age about the tent, and upon investigation I could not see 
that anything had been damaged but the mirror — a small 
affair — and it was cracked as though it had been' trodden 
upon. As I was very tired I thought the easiest thing to 
do would be to lie down in some tall grass nearby, and 
while watching for the possible return of the raider try 
and conjecture what manner of man or beast it might 
have been. Before I did so I noticed that the few books, 
and a few numbers of the Forest and Stream that we 
had in the tent, were now not only scattered but they 
were mostly torn and separated leaf from leaf. Upon one 
of the pages of Forest and Stream — which very page 
contained an account of a bear hunt — I found the muddy 
footprint of a bear. 
This footprint rather confirmed my suspicion that Jack 
had been doing the mischief, but the footprint was not 
complete, and what there was of it seemed larger than 
that of one of Jack’s feet. Furthermore, as evidence in 
his favor, he had never been known to dO’ anything of 
this kind. It is true, he sometimes carried about one of 
our boots, but he had never taken them far nor damaged 
them. He had once chewed up a straw hat for me, but it 
was one that I had endeavored to teach him to wear. 
From time to time I had tried it upon his head, and I 
believe he destroyed the hat because it was not a good 
one, and was out of date and style. He had never been 
destructive. 
A little before dusk Enochs came in and Dick followed 
shortly after. I had left things as I found them, and 
they were as much puzzled as I until they saw the track 
upon the paper. Enochs insisted that it was Jack’s track, 
but Dick agreed with me in the opinion that it was too 
large to be one of Jack’s footprints. None of us was 
sure of his opinion, and we never did fully satisfy our-- 
selves about the matter, but I later formed the theory 
that Jack had been visited by one of his own tribe and 
that his visitor, or both of them together, had decided to 
upset things. None of us had seen Jack since daybreak. 
Enochs and Dick had tramped many miles, each of them 
upon a different mountain. Both had seen deer, but Dick 
had failed to- get a shot, while Enochs protested that he 
was too far from cainp to bother with them— he was out 
after bear, he claimed. We made the usual allowances. 
We set up the tent and restored its contents, glad to 
find that this was not as great a task as it seemed at first 
glance. We had our supper, made our evening camp- 
fire, and recounted the day’s doings while we smoked. 
Although we called and whistled for him at intervals. Jack 
did not show up. As this was the first time we had all 
left camp at one time we now conjectured that Jack had 
followed upon the track of one or the other of us. If so, 
he would be in for a long tramp, and as he always had so 
