In this blackberry-patch bears had been seen.  The summer before, our colored cook, accompanied by a little girl of the vicinage, was picking berries there one day, when a bear came out of the woods, and walked towards them.  The girl took to her heels, and escaped.  Aunt Chloe was paralyzed with terror.  Instead of attempting to run, she sat down on the ground where she was standing, and began to weep and scream, giving herself up for lost.  The bear was bewildered by this conduct.  He approached and looked at her; he walked around and surveyed her.  Probably he had never seen a colored person before, and did not know whether she would agree with him:  at any rate, after watching her a few moments, he turned about, and went into the forest.  This is an authentic instance of the delicate consideration of a bear, and is much more remarkable than the forbearance towards the African slave of the well-known lion, because the bear had no thorn in his foot.

When I had climbed the hill,—­I set up my rifle against a tree, and began picking berries, lured on from bush to bush by the black gleam of fruit (that always promises more in the distance than it realizes when you reach it); penetrating farther and farther, through leaf-shaded cow-paths flecked with sunlight, into clearing after clearing.  I could hear on all sides the tinkle of bells, the cracking of sticks, and the stamping of cattle that were taking refuge in the thicket from the flies.  Occasionally, as I broke through a covert, I encountered a meek cow, who stared at me stupidly for a second, and then shambled off into the brush.  I became accustomed to this dumb society, and picked on in silence, attributing all the wood noises to the cattle, thinking nothing of any real bear.  In point of fact, however, I was thinking all the time of a nice romantic bear, and as I picked, was composing a story about a generous she-bear who had lost her cub, and who seized a small girl in this very wood, carried her tenderly off to a cave, and brought her up on bear’s milk and honey.  When the girl got big enough to run away, moved by her inherited instincts, she escaped, and came into the valley to her father’s house (this part of the story was to be worked out, so that the child would know her father by some family resemblance, and have some language in which to address him), and told him where the bear lived.  The father took his gun, and, guided by the unfeeling daughter, went into the woods and shot the bear, who never made any resistance, and only, when dying, turned reproachful eyes upon her murderer.  The moral of the tale was to be kindness to animals.