“Now, keep back, all of you!” I cried.  “Bears don’t spring from trees, but it will be better for you to be out of the way while I try to get him down.”

I walked up to the oak-tree, and then I found that the bear was still firmly attached to it.  His chain had been fastened loosely around the trunk; he had climbed up to the branch and pulled the chain with him.

I now called upon Orso to come down, but apparently he did not understand English, and lay quietly upon the branch, his head towards the trunk of the tree.  I extended my hand up towards the chain, and found that I could nearly reach it.  “Shall I give you a lift?” cried Walter, and I accepted the offer.  It was a hard piece of work for him, but he was a professed athlete, and he would have lifted me if it had cracked his spine.  I reached up and unhooked the chain.  It was then long enough for me to stand on the ground and hold the end of it.

Now I began to pull.  “Come down!” I said.  “Come down, Orso!” But Orso did not move.

“Bears don’t come down head-foremost,” cried Percy; “they turn around and come down backwards.  You ought to have a chain to his tail if you want to pull him down.”

“He hasn’t got any tail!” exclaimed Genevieve.

I was in a quandary.  I might as well try to break the branch as to pull the bear down.  “If we had only thought of bringing a bucket of meat!” cried Percy.

“Would you mind holding the chain,” I said to Walter, “while I try to drive him down?” Of course the developed young man was not afraid to do anything I was not afraid to do, and he took the chain.  There was a pine-tree growing near the oak, and, mounting into this, I found that with a long stick which Mr. Larramie handed me I could just reach the bear.  “Go down!” I said, tapping him on the haunches, but he did not move.

“Can’t you speak to him in Italian?” said Genevieve.  “Tame bears know Italian.  Doesn’t anybody know the Italian for ’Come down out of a tree?’” But such knowledge was absent from the party.

“Try him in Latin,” cried Percy.  “That must be a good deal like Italian, anyway.”

To this suggestion Mr. Larramie made no answer; he had left college before any of the party present had been born; Mr. Walter looked a little confused; he had graduated several years before, and his classics were rusty.  I felt that my pedagogical position made it incumbent upon me to take immediate action, but for the life of me I could not think of an appropriate phrase.

“Give him high English!” cried Mr. Larramie.  “That’s often classic enough!  Tell him to descend!”

“Orso, descend!” I cried, giving a little foreign twang to the words.  Immediately the bear began to twist like a caterpillar upon the limb, he extended his hind-legs towards the trunk, he seized it with his fore-paws.  He began slowly to move downward.

“Hurrah!” cried Percy, “that hit him like a rifle-ball!  Hurrah for high English!  That’s good enough for me!”