I tried to remember what I had read about encounters with bears.  I couldn’t recall an instance in which a man had run away from a bear in the woods and escaped, although I recalled plenty where the bear had run from the man and got off.  I tried to think what is the best way to kill a bear with a gun, when you are not near enough to club him with the stock.  My first thought was to fire at his head; to plant the ball between his eyes:  but this is a dangerous experiment.  The bear’s brain is very small; and, unless you hit that, the bear does not mind a bullet in his head; that is, not at the time.  I remembered that the instant death of the bear would follow a bullet planted just back of his fore-leg, and sent into his heart.  This spot is also difficult to reach, unless the bear stands off, side towards you, like a target.  I finally determined to fire at him generally.

The bear was coming on.

The contest seemed to me very different from anything at Creedmoor.  I had carefully read the reports of the shooting there; but it was not easy to apply the experience I had thus acquired.  I hesitated whether I had better fire lying on my stomach or lying on my back, and resting the gun on my toes.  But in neither position, I reflected, could I see the bear until he was upon me.  The range was too short; and the bear wouldn’t wait for me to examine the thermometer, and note the direction of the wind.  Trial of the Creedmoor method, therefore, had to be abandoned; and I bitterly regretted that I had not read more accounts of offhand shooting.

For the bear was coming on.

I tried to fix my last thoughts upon my family.  As my family is small, this was not difficult.  Dread of displeasing my wife, or hurting her feelings, was uppermost in my mind.  What would be her anxiety as hour after hour passed on, and I did not return!  What would the rest of the household think as the afternoon passed, and no blackberries came!  What would be my wife’s mortification when the news was brought that her husband had been eaten by a bear!  I cannot imagine anything more ignominious than to have a husband eaten by a bear.  And this was not my only anxiety.  The mind at such times is not under control.  With the gravest fears the most whimsical ideas will occur.  I looked beyond the mourning friends, and thought what kind of an epitaph they would be compelled to put upon the stone.

Something like this: 

Here lie the remains

Of
_______________

Eaten by A bear
Aug. 20, 1877

It is a very unheroic and even disagreeable epitaph.  That “eaten by a bear” is intolerable.  It is grotesque.  And then I thought what an inadequate language the English is for compact expression.  It would not answer to put upon the stone simply “eaten”; for that is indefinite, and requires explanation:  it might mean eaten by a cannibal.  This difficulty could not occur in the German, where essen signifies the act of feeding by a man, and fressen by a beast.  How simple the thing would be in German!