“H——­,” said a friend of mine, as he stalked into my sanctum, a few days after my return, and seated himself at my elbow, as if for a private and confidential talk, “did Smith really shoot the bear, the skin of which he brought home, and which he exhibits with such triumph.  Tell me, honestly, as between you and me, did he in fact shoot him?”

“Smith certainly did shoot that bear,” I replied.

“But is the marvellous story he tells about the manner of killing him really true?”

“That, of course, I cannot tell,” I replied, “as I have never heard the story.”

“Why,” said my friend, “he tells about a beautiful lake, lying away back in the northern wilderness, above which Mount Marcy, and Mount Seward, and other nameless peaks of the Adirondacks, rear their tall heads to the clouds, throwing back the sunlight in a blaze of glory; on which the moonbeams lie like a mantle of silver, while away down in its fathomless depths the stars glow and sparkle, like the sheen of a million of diamonds.  Of the old forests and trees of fabulous growth, stretching away and away on every hand, throwing their sombre shadows far out over the water, in whose tangled recesses countless deer and moose, and panthers, and bears range, and among whose branches birds of unknown melody carol.  That one side of this beautiful lake is palisadoed by a wall of rocks, stand straight up sixty feet high, near the top of which is a shelf or narrow pathway, along which two men can scarcely walk abreast.  That he was passing along this pathway one afternoon, examining the rocks, and looking for geological specimens.  Below him was a precipice of fifty feet, against the base of which the waves, when the winds swept over the lake, dashed.  Around him the birds that build their nests in the crevices of the rock were whirling and screaming, while before him lay the beautiful lake, motionless and calm, as if it had fallen asleep and was slumbering sweetly in its forest bed.  That he was passing leisurely along with his rifle at a trail, admiring the transcendent loveliness of the scenery around him, where the rugged and the sublime, the placid and the beautiful, were so magnificently mingled, when, in turning a sharp angle, a huge bear”

“Copy!” shouted the printer’s devil, as he came plunging down three steps at a bound from the compositors’ room above.  “Copy!” he screamed, as he dove into the outer office where that article was usually kept, but found none.

“Mr. H.,” said he, as he opened my door so gently, with a voice so quiet, and a look so innocent, that one might well be excused for believing that he had never spoken a loud word in his life, “Mr. H——­, the foreman desired me to ask you for some copy.”

“You see, my friend,” said I to the anxious inquirer after truth, “that I am exceedingly busy just now.  You will excuse me, therefore, for referring you to the Doctor and Spalding, who know all about the matter.  Good day.”  And my friend departed without finishing the story Smith told him about his killing the bear.  I have never heard the balance of that story yet.