This etext was prepared by David Widger, widger@cecomet.net
The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Volume 3
[SPELLING: There are many interesting spelling variations from modernday usage in the first two books which remind one that English is nota dead language (grewsome and bowlders I particularly like); but inCaptain Smith and Pocohantas one is taken back into Elizabethan timeswhere spelling of the same word may well vary three times a page andis a matter, as one may say, of "every man for himself." D.W.]
So many conflicting accounts have appeared about my casual encounterwith an Adirondack bear last summer that in justice to the public, tomyself, and to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement ofthe facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion to kill a bear,that the celebration of the exploit may be excused.
The encounter was unpremeditated on both sides. I was not huntingfor a bear, and I have no reason to suppose that a bear was lookingfor me. The fact is, that we were both out blackberrying, and met bychance, the usual way. There is among the Adirondack visitors alwaysa great deal of conversation about bears,—a general expression ofthe wish to see one in the woods, and much speculation as to how aperson would act if he or she chanced to meet one. But bears arescarce and timid, and appear only to a favored few.
It was a warm day in August, just the sort of day when an adventureof any kind seemed impossible. But it occurred to the housekeepersat our cottage—there were four of them—to send me to the clearing,on the mountain back of the house, to pick blackberries. It wasrather a series of small clearings, running up into the forest, muchovergrown with bushes and briers, and not unromantic. Cows pasturedthere, penetrating through the leafy passages from one opening toanother, and browsing among the bushes. I was kindly furnished witha six-quart pail, and told not to be gone long.
Not from any predatory instinct, but to save appearances, I took agun. It adds to the manly aspect of a person with a tin pail if healso carries a gun. It was possible I might start up a partridge;though how I was to hit him, if he started up instead of standingstill, puzzled me. Many people use a shotgun for partridges. Iprefer the rifle: it makes a clean job of death, and does notprematurely stuff the bird with globules of lead. The rifle was aSharps, carrying a ball cartridge (ten to the pound),—an excellentweapon belonging to a friend of mine, who had intended, for a goodmany years back, to kill a deer with it. He could hit a tree with it—if the wind did not blow, and the atmosphere was just right, andthe tree was not too far off—nearly every time. Of course, the treemust have some size. Needless to say that I was at that time nosportsman. Years ago I killed a robin under the most humiliatingcircumstances. The bird was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a bigshotgun pretty full, crept up under the tree, rested the gun on thefence, with the muzzle more than ten feet from the bird, shut botheyes, and pulled the trigger. When I got up to see what hadhappened, the robin was scattered about under the tree in more than athousand pieces, no one of which was big enough to enable anaturalist to decide from it to what species it belonged. Thisdisgusted me with the life of a sportsman. I mention the incident toshow that, althou