Oct. i 8, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
489 
bears walked swiftly up the opposite slope, again 
sat up, took a searching view in my direction 
and commenced going through the same gyra¬ 
tions as before. Had they believed the coyote’s 
tale at first, they would have come up from the 
gulch on a run and disappeared. 
Their actions plainly showed their uneasi¬ 
ness and their doubt as to what course to pur¬ 
sue. Before them was that mass of fat flesh 
they were eager to fill up on; yet, in the face of 
the story told by that lying coyote, that their 
inveterate enemy was lurking near, they hesi¬ 
tated to take the chances. Finally, at a swift 
walk, they went up the opposite bank, thus ap¬ 
parently intent on some scheme. I kept them in 
sight with my field glasses until, after going 
about two hundred yards, they stopped, re¬ 
mained irresolute for a while, and then retraced 
their steps and appeared on the point of de¬ 
scending to where the coyote was enjoying him¬ 
self. 
They were evidently afraid to do so, and 
again sat up and looked long and intently in 
my direction. My clothes were so much the 
color of dry grass and I hugged the ground so 
closely, with my head to them, that they did not 
discover danger. Again they began to do what 
they had done before—walking away fifty feet or 
more, then coming back again, and sitting up 
and looking intently in my direction. By this 
time I became very much interested as to the 
significance of their actions, and my wits became 
sharpened. I became interested in guessing at 
what these two hungry bears would do. 
Finally putting their heads together, they 
apparently held a council of war and determined 
on a course of action. They moved swiftly up 
the creek, as once before they had done. I 
watched them through the field glasses, for the 
moon was shining, and they soon disappeared 
in the darkness. 
It then dawned upon me what these bears 
were up to. Evidently they intended to cross 
the creek a short distance above, make a circuit 
some distance in rear of the point where they 
feared their enemy lurked, obtain its wind, as¬ 
certain what it was and then act. 
In the bright moonlight and the open cot¬ 
tonwood timber a good view could be had by the 
aid of glasses for a long distance up the creek. 
I kept a sharp lookout, and soon detected two 
dark objects, and approaching*. My surmise had 
proved correct. It was time to act. Withdraw¬ 
ing cautiously out of sight, I made a circuit to 
the rear far enough, as I believed, to circumvent 
their designs, took a position in a low swale, 
and waited.' 
As they approached at a fast walk, they 
could be easily heard sniffing the air for the 
scent of their enemy. They looked fearfully big 
in the moonlight. Finding my position was 
sufficiently far back to circumvent their design. 
I lay down on the side of the swale in a position 
from which I could quickly rise to a sitting 
posture and deliver fire. Sniffing the air 
audibly, they came rapidly forward, and as it 
happened, along the lowest part of the swale 
in which I lay, and with the direction taken, they 
would soon stumble upon me. They were ap¬ 
proaching so rapidly that something had to be 
done soon. It was now “either a fight or a foot 
race. I did not hesitate, but rose quickly to a 
sitting position with ride ready for action. At 
( Conti,1 tied on page 505.) 
Comfort in 
By ERNEST 
C OMFORT is of course a relative matter, 
like so much else in the world. I read in 
a capital magazine stoiy last month of the 
sigh of pure enjoyment with which a millionaire, 
used to his cushioned chair and luxurious table, 
stretched himself in utter satisfaction at the 
foot of an old stump and molded the crumbling 
wood to his shoulder’s ease. His healthful weari¬ 
ness made it the softest of couches, and his 
vigorous appetite gave a flavor to his rough plate 
of bacon and trout which no club's cook could 
surpass. And so 1 wondered, as I stretched my 
feet toward the fire beside Bimber’s nose, and 
blew a great cloud of fragrance from my brier- 
wood, whether I was really much more at ease 
than many another creature less warmly pro¬ 
vided for. 
There is my man Patrick, for instance. No 
doubt he feels himself quite as well off as I 
this winter night, sitting in the back room of 
Casey’s dark little saloon, with his short black 
clay and his glass of beer; nor does his wife 
Norah envy him as she croons by her kitchen 
stove and her pot of tea, the work being done 
and the children in bed. 
The fox in his dry cave, the squirrel in his 
leaf-bedded hollow tree, each wrapped in the 
blanket of his bushy tail, even the bear in his 
den, with no tail at all to shield his nose from 
the chill, probably feels as satisfying a sense of 
rest and security as I, each according to his 
lights. 
“When winter fringes every bough 
With his fantastic wreath, 
* * * * 
“And in his gallery the mouse 
Nibbleth the meadow hay; 
“Methinks that summer still is nigh. 
And lurketh underneath, 
As that same meadow-mouse doth lie 
Snug in that last year’s heath.” 
Thus sings Thoreau. Then there is the “bug 
in the rug.” His snugness is proverbial, but 
don’t tell Bimber! 
Perhaps, then, I am no more comfortable than 
other homekeeping creatures, measuring each by 
his requirements. 
But here comes in again the factor of rela¬ 
tivity. I require more than they in my hiberna¬ 
tion-—food for the mind as.well as for the body, 
and I long in this evening hour when winter 
shuts me in for the companionship of authors 
who will restore the summer. Not every man 
who “babbles of brooks” will do that, however. 
The firelight glints on rows of varicolored books 
as I glance up at the walls of my room, and I 
do not need to read their titles, half lost in the 
flickering shadows, for I know them all by place 
and color. There is store of books for study 
there—manuals of vertebrates and invertebrates, 
ornithologies and entomologies, sturdy philoso¬ 
phies of evolution and treatises on the sea and 
all that in it is. Let them stand until they are 
wanted for service; they are merely tools—most 
useful, but not meant for a meditative hour by 
one’s fireside. 
Beneath them rests a long row of sports¬ 
men’s tales, narratives of exploration and other 
outdoor books; but as my eye sweeps along their 
Old Books 
INGERSOLL 
lettered bindings it kindles with enthusiasm over 
few even of these titles. In fact, as I gaze at 
my recent books 1 am impressed by the paucity 
of those which will suit my present mood. 
Leaving out of account the poets and essay¬ 
ists on outdoor topics—such writers as Thomas 
Jefferson, Flagg, Higginson, Emerson, Thoreau, 
Burroughs and the like, and such story tellers 
as Seton and Roberts—there is a sad lack of 
imagination and literary grace, even of literary 
merit, nowadays in our books on animal life or 
relating to sport with rod and gun. Facts new 
and important may abound, adventures be thrill¬ 
ing, personal life in the open faithfully described 
and the diction, sentence by sentence, hard to 
criticize, yet the spirit of the experience will not 
be well communicated. 
It may be asking a good deal to expect it, 
and yet we have a right to do so, for more than 
once has a standard of enduring excellence been 
obtained in books of this class. The older men 
did it. Who, for instance, reads “The Compleat 
Angler” or “White of Selborne’s Letters to 
Daines Barington” and other'“ingenious” friends 
for the information they contain? And who does 
not dip into them for joy of the limpid style and 
the naively beautiful images they call to mind? 
Taking down my “Selborne” I open it carelessly 
and my eye falls upon this: 
“Dear Sir, —In a district so diversified as 
this, so full of hollow vales and hanging woods, 
it is no wonder that echoes should abound. 
Many we have discovered, that return the cry 
of a pack of dogs, the notes of a hunting horn, 
a tunable ring of bells, or the melody of birds, 
very agreeably. * * * 
“Echo has always been so amusing to the 
imagination, that the poets have personified her; 
and, in their hands, she has been the occasion of 
many a beautiful fiction. Nor need the gravest 
man be ashamed to appear taken with such a 
phenomenon, since it may become the subject of 
philosophical or mathematical inquiries. 
“One should have imagined that echoes, if 
not entertaining, must at least have been harm¬ 
less and inoffensive; yet Virgil advances a 
strange notion, that they are injurious to bees. 
Then follows a gravely delightful discussion 
of this “wild and fanciful assertion’’. 
One might question whether English litera¬ 
ture, in the department we are now considering, 
does not owe a greater debt to Gilbert White 
and Izaak Walton than has ever been acknowl¬ 
edged. The vivid outdoor pictures incidental to 
the novels and poems of Scott, the humorous 
sketches of Christopher North, of the Ettrick 
Shepherd, of Dr. John Brown, and of the Irish 
author of “Wild Sports of the West” hark back 
to the influences of these two classics, which 
themselves were taught of Virgil and Ovid, as 
Buffon followed in his eloquence the engaging 
manner of Pliny. Jefferies alone seems original. 
It was in this school, too, that Alexander 
Wilson learned that purity of English diction, 
that sincere simplicity of style, which characterize 
his writings. In this respect, as in some others, 
he is the foremost of that great trio of exponents 
of bird life—Wilson, Audubon and Nuttall— 
