black stump, and that if Charley would retract his invention, I would tell them how it was. Charley unblushingly said that he would "skin out," and I thereupon related how I had that day stopped to rest, on a little bluff that overlooked a patch of chemisal. I had looked the brush over carefully, as I thought, and had noticed nothing peculiar, until, on looking a moment later, I saw in it what I took for a burnt stump, with two little knots resembling a bear's ears. I had not seen this stump at first looking, but I thought nothing of that. It looked, however, so much like a bear's head, that I concluded that I would "draw a bead" on it, and snap the "set" of my rifle—just to see how nicely I could hit it, if it only were a bear. I did this several times, as steady as marble-when my supposed stump suddenly dropped on to all fours, and started off. I tried to aim then at it, but I shook so, I could not hit a mountain. My gun did go off, but I don't think that I saw anything at the time except the bear--which went off, too. I shook as if I had the ague, and felt weak, so I sat down. Then for the next five minutes I amused myself watching my knees tremble and trying to stop them. How supremely disgusted I was with myself and the world at large, only those who have been in the like situation can imagine.

The laughter that greeted the narration of this, however, while it did me no harm, must have been vastly beneficial to them:

"I comed within an ace of getting myself into jest such a snap as you put up on George here!" exclaimed Dave. "To-day I was going through the woods with the old shot-gun, when I seen a cub clawing the a cub clawing the bark off a rotten log, on Crystal Crick; hunting for bugs and worms-"

"Was it on the other side of Crystal Creek, Dave?" interrupted I, for I had seen bear tracks there that day.

"No," Dave curtly replied.

"Was it on this side?" I inquired, less eagerly.

No, hit was jest hat the crick. Hit was not habove the crick, hor below the crick; hit was not on this side the crick, hor the other side the crick; hit was jes' hat the crick. Do you hunderstand now? Wal, I crawled up to about forty steps of hit; and had jes' drawn bead on hit, and was pulling trigger, when the old she grizzly rose bodaciously up from ahind the log; an' I jes' got a tree atween me and her, mighty quick, and shinned out from thar, I tell ye; an' that ole bar didn't never know I'd been 'roun'."

Why in thunder didn't you try them a rattle anyhow?" exclaimed Charley.

"Oh! I wasn't hunting bar, I was jes' looking for deer," Dave replied ingenuously.

"Dave," I interrupted, "Is bodaciously a good American word? How do you spell it ? "

"Oh! you go to the devil!"

"But I'll give you five dollars if you will find the word in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary,"

"Webster's-? Be blanked to him! Webster is jes' as liable to be mistaken as I are."

"Did I ever tell you Dave," inquired I, "how near a dear friend of mine came to running away with an Irish girl?" I said "Irish" as a challenge to Mac also.

'No," Dave answered. " Did you have a friend about to run off with one?" "Yes."

"Wal, why didn't he, then ?" "Oh! another person ran away with her." "But why didn't he elope first ?" "He was unacquainted with her then," I replied in an absent-minded manner.

While Dave was considering this Mac was evidently occupied with another point; and, doubtless, he finally concluded that I had cast reflections on Irish girls as a class; for, with his eyes gleaming balefully beneath their grizzled brows, he riveted me, as did the Ancient Mariner his listener, and began:

"Gearge! There was a mon in the ould Dart. He was a good mon. He always

came up with his rint. Und there was born unto him saven sons und thra dahters. Und the sons want into the Quane's airmy. Und the dahters was as foine a lot of girls as you'd mate in any one day's travil. Und two of them married lards. Und one of them ran away with a waiver. Und the ould mon followed thim to Doublin. Und he caught her. Und he fetched her back. Und he cut off her hair. Und he covered her head with black tare.

Und he put her in a dark barn. Und he kapt her there fur noine days. Und then he barnished her to Austrahlia. Und that's the way they sarve the girls in my counthray."

Whatever other doubts might, like Banquo's ghost, obtrude at our feast, which of us after that could question the proper training of Erin's fair daughters? The subject was dropped.

Then said Charley, "I saw something today that would have made your eyes snap!" "What was it," I asked.

"I saw Old Club-foot.'

Old Club-foot was a monster grizzly, maimed in one foot, who was renowned in the region.

"That's nothing," said Jack, who had been rather ostentatiously silent. "I killed him an' anoder bar a few hours ago."

"You infernal old liar, you !" retorted Charley. "A man can't tell the truth any more but you must up and tell a blanked lie to cap it! Tell the company now that Grecian fable-about the fat bear you killed in the Coast Range; do, Jack."

"It's a God's truth about Old Club-foot, as I'll show you tomorrow, reiterated Small; "an' so it is about that fat bar. You know, in the Coast Range they has a kind o' bar-some grizzly, I reckon-they calls a Rushen brown bar; and this war one o' them varmints. Bars thar that season war so thick they had trails all through the chaparral. I minded one particular large track-over sixteen inches long-an' the print it made in the soft ground showed the

insect wasn't light as a fairy. A fat bar always comes down on to his heel, you know; and a poor bar only steps on his toes, you know. Wal, arter I got onto the critter's racket, I sets a gun for him, an' 'long in the night we heerd it go off. The next day we took tracks, an' we soon seen by the blood the varmint had got something aside from the bait. Wal, arter awhile we comed on to it in a little ravine--dead as a door nail--an' it weren't no baby, I tell you. The sun had rised, right smart, an' that bar had sort o' melted, and the ile runned down to a little hollow, and made thar a minitor lake

"With Isles of Greece,'" interjected Charley.

"Wal, we reckoned the varmint dressed over twelve hundred ; an' the ile we tried 1; out war a caution to greasers."

"I

"And, I would add, a caution to the credulous," Charley again supplemented. once made a careful estimate from the data he furnished, and it amounted to something over a ton.”

"A careful estimate from an idjeot imagination, more like!" retorted Small.

"Don't you ever sell the oil to pharmacists to make pomatum of?" I inquired. "Well, I should smile!" said Charley-"and so would the druggists if they supposed you thought hair daubs were ever inside bear skins. Calves' fat makes the young bloods good hair oil; and bears' grease makes us good lard. Otherwise, as Tennyson very beautifully says, 'If what is fair be but for what is fair, and calves' grease be for calves, and bears' grease be for bearrash were my judgment, then, who deem herein no violation of the bond of like to like.'

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Charley chuckled at the way the others received this as a literal quotation, and I smiled, as I said: "I suppose then the clerk lied who told the lady who asked him if he had the Exiles of Siberia,' that he had not, but that he had some very fine

bear's ile from the Rocky Mountains.' "Und that reminds me of what I disremember-Ah! I have it neow. It's meself und Davey, bhoy, have been raiding of the islands fornenst Alaska; und w'ave thought to be after moving there and start a cannery. It's meself, neow, can solder und Dave can do the spearing. Und w'ave come to talk it over, und have your expression in the business," said Mac, earnestly.

"Well, Dave ought to be good at spearing salmon, for the same reason that the hunter's dog ought to have been a good bear dog," remarked Charley.

"Und why was that, sure?"

"Oh! because he was no account for anything else. Did you ever serve at the tinman's trade, Mac?"

"I've done soldering in the ould counthry, sure neow."

"How do you think of going, Mac?" I inquired.

"W'are ondecided whither by stahmer or canal-boat."

"That calls to mind something I one time heard a Dutchman say," said Charley. "When scouting for Uncle Sam, I was once guide for a detail escorting some settlers into eastern Idaho--a thousand miles from anywhere save emigrant wagon or pack-mule communication. An old Dutchman in the party was in one constant streak of ill-luck. Once crossing a gulch in one of the sandy sage-brush valleys, he broke his wagon-tongue out. We halted, and I put in another for him out of a willow. While I was doing this, he did nothing but bewail his misfortunes. One thing he said was: 'If ever I go to Idaho agin by this route, I'll go by stahmer.' I would humbly suggest, Mac, that you profit by his experience."

Mac and Dave had all along been "feeding like horses when you hear them feed;" and the latter here finished his fourth bear paw, saying: "Wal, my stomach feels about replete."

"And that calls to mind an observation I heard a Scotchman in our outfit in Washington Territory make," said Charley. "There they have every spring 'Chinook winds,' that are very warm and dry, and carry off the snow so fast you can see it melt, and when the wind is a little late coming, the Indians have a Chinook-dance, to hurry it up. We were watching a band one night, kicking their heels until the sweat ran, to make medicine' for the weather. Their 'woven paces' and 'waving hands' -which, after all were not very intricategot away with the old Scotchman, who delivered himself with: 'By God! boys, I do believe there is something in it!"" Dave evidently did not discern any application, and Charley continued: "One bear's paws, as the fellow said of the gallon of liquor, 'aren't much among one.""

"How well the old Scotchman's remark shows the uncanny, eerie Scotch mind!" I musingly observed.

"When it comes to the pinch, every one believes in a Supreme Ruler--a Sanctum Sanctorium--to whom he can put up a petition in case of necessity," said Dave.

66

"Yes," said Charley, "I once hunted with a rough case, who used to boast that he had never prayed in his life. Well, once he jumped a huge grizzly that showed fight, and his muzzle-loader snapped. I was close by, although he didn't know it; but I could not shoot on account of some intervening twigs. While I moved a little so as to get an open shot, I saw the scamp draw his knife, and overheard him say: 'O God!-if there is such a man--help me now, if you ever intend to help me; but if you can't help me, don't help the bear; but you just lay low, God, and you'll see one of the goldarnedest bear-fights ever you seen' Just then my rifle cracked; and over rolled the bear-in direct answer, he ever after maintained, to his fervid appeal."

"And the few words that reached the air.

Although the holiest name was there,
Had more of blasphemy than prayer,' "

I said gravely. "And Charley, while here such talk may give no one a shock, it would be worth while, I think, if we would stop to figure what good we get from what would wound the finer sensibility of those sincere people that you call' narrow minded.

'An Atheist-laugh's a poor exchange
For Deity offended!'

When I was a boy, too, I once heard an old sinner tell that same tale, as having happened to one whom he knew when himself a boy; and I think I have seen it in detail several times in print. So it has not even originality to redeem it."

"When you come to know Charley as well as I do, you'll swallow his yarns with a power o' allowance," confided Small.

"Be careful of your personalities, old satyr!" growled Charley. "But Jack, tell "But Jack, tell your yarn about the big trout you caught in Deef Creek, two foot between the eyes, and longer than your boat, you know. Come, I'll stand sponsor for the truth of that."

"That war a sturgeon we caught in the Sacramento," corrected Small.

"But," persisted Charley, "you said your footing was slippery, and when you speared him, he took you over the riffle, into deep water, where you had to for it."

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dently of his own composition, with reflections upon the wrongs of society, and a refrain to the effect that,

"The grandeur, and beauty, and air blowing free, Of a mountain land and a genial band, And a life in the woods, does me,"

-in which refrain Jack joined with a deep, baritone voice, like the fourth string of a violoncello. I took prompt exception, however, to the "social cant of its sentiments. This brought forth a long monologue on the land question, on which it seemed Charley held strong opinions.

Henry George says, 'our land laws are more unjust than the English,' "" he said rising, and showing a good deal of warmth; "and while I take issue with him in general, I endorse this. "The firmest of social bonds, and the most potent source of patriotic inspiration spring from the possession of landed property; and a permanent, well-proportioned distribution of such property among the citizens is and always will be one of the principal objects of a wise government.' The most notable free people of antiquity so considered it, and they even went so far as to make some landed possession one qualification of citizenship. They sought by legislation to prevent a monopoly of the soil in the hands of the few to the exclusion of the many; and their failure to accomplish this was, in the opinions of the wisest judges, the root of all those evils that finally resulted in their downfall.

"Now see how wisely we have profited by the experience of past ages! California for instance: To induce early settlement the Mexican government granted land to such of her citizens as established a specified settlement thereon. When that country ceded the territory to the United States, we agreed to acknowledge all grants made by her prior to the treaty. Our government took no proper measures, however, to decide as to the validity of these grants; and a law firm in San Francisco sent one of its members to the City of Mexico for the sole

purpose of obtaining fraudulent land titles. Bribed, doubtless, a land agent here lets other worthless deeds pass by default. Then Congress passes a law confirming the titles to those parties that have bought land from grant claimants! Still land is left in our wide valleys—and monopolies are bountifully subsidized with it. Then the wise guardians of the nation's wealth legislate themselves much of the rest in 'Swamp and Overflow,' Timber,' Desert,' and other 'Land Acts.' So the people have been juggled out of their natural inheritance, until our fertile valleys are portioned into estates that dwarf those of feudal times. Now, in the name of Reason, what chance is there left for free schools, and those industries that go to sustain a people such as the founders of our republic intended? Rather a grim outlook 'ranch-wages' would be to marry on. Can any one, knowing the law of reaction, wonder that a season of this grinding toil is so usually followed by a week of license, which ends in a period in the hospital? The laborer is valued less than the horse-and this under a government the very nature of whose institutions, it has been said, makes a man's manhood his most valuable possession!-Valuable indeed! because in office it commands a standard market price. I grant that industry must be left untrammeled, and the citizen protected in his acquisitions, or there would be no impulse to exertion. But when it comes to an individual being able to amass a hundred million dollars during a lifetime, I 'suspect that the social institutions that make this possible go a little farther than leaving him untrammeled--that bribery and corruption are not unknown in the legislatures that are so profusely generous of the national possessions; that in short, the whole thing is run in the interests of dishonesty. With the rich growing richer and the poor poorer,' and social rifts continually opening wider and more appalling, no wonder 'Many a thoughtful Curtius begins to ask

where Rome shall find a jewel precious enough to be cast in and save the city from being swallowed up'!

"And meanwhile our plutocrats, would have caste. Ranks are relative, so, as if conscious of their own innate vulgarity and superficiality, they would get distinction by further degrading labor. To do this they would have our land overrun with hordes of Chinese coolies. And already these mighties are generally guilty of absenteeism. Vampire-like, they draw the life-blood of the country to feed their insatiable desires. The only limit now to the rents their avarice wrings, is when the tiller discovers that further concessions to extortion would drive him into certain ruin. How long will it be before the small farmers will all be turned from their rural holdings into the tenement houses of cities--where every evil passion is stimulated, and the home perishes of asphyxia'? and then laws be introduced, regulating the relations of landlords and tenants, and a standing army be kept to sustain them? and, finally, that other pernicious evil of primogeniture and entail be added? And yet an evil not so pernicious either, if Doctor Johnson's bitter apology for it is true-- That it makes but one fool in a family.' A poor criterion money is of mental caliber! Why, sir, I have heard two tramps, by the way-side, tell of the geological formation of the countries they had visited, and enter into a discussion of political economy with an understanding that might put the scientist and statesman to blush. I grant they were the exception and not the rule; but, I tell you, the class that is here to-day, was in Mexico last year, and will be in Alaska or South America, perhaps, next, has more than a brute instinct, and may sometime question the why and wherefore of things. If we do not propose to rely everywhere on force for maintaining law and to glide into despotism, the law itself must appeal to the understanding by its own justice. • The