"And now that you've waked me up I'm going to tell you something else. You human beings are not only a hard lot, but a stupid lot. You think you're mighty smart, don't you, with your bear-traps and your shooting machines that you shoot each other with, as well as shooting the rest of us! But do you know what _I_ think? I think if some of us--the bears or the beavers or the ants, for example--had had half your chance they'd have been twice as smart; and then we bears might have gone around shooting at you, the way Mr. Beard showed once in one of those funny pictures of his." [Illustration: HUNTING THAT DOESN'T HURT Hunting with a gun is great sport. But now you know from my story what good the animals do in the world you may not like so well to kill them. And there is a new kind of hunting that is just as much fun--with a camera. This picture shows a boy in ambush, ready to shoot, by pressing a bulb; for the bird in the tree is exactly in front of the shutter of the camera.] You see, Brer Bear has a good tongue in his head as well as a wise old head on his shoulders, and I must say he's entirely right when he makes the statement that human beings aren't anywhere near as bright, according to the chance they've had, as the bears and the beavers and the ants and the bees, and many others that could be named. Why, do you know that in the whole history of the human race there have been only a few really bright people, like Mr. Shakespere and Mr. Kipling, Mr. Archimedes and Mr. Edison. It was such men as these--not over two thousand or three thousand out of the millions upon millions of human beings who have lived on the earth--that raised the rest up from the Stone Age to where they are to-day. "Into the coarse dough of humanity an infrequent genius has put some enchanted yeast." That's the way a recent English writer puts it. And then he goes on to say that if snakes and beasts of prey had been as clever as the bees and ants and beavers, men would have been exterminated. They could have saved themselves only by getting on with their education, climbing up the grades, a good deal faster than they have done. He says it--this Englishman--almost in the very words of Brer Bear. And we can imagine Brer Bear going on, taking up where the Englishman leaves off. "In other words," says Brer Bear, "it was because the bees and ants and beavers went on minding their own business, neither hurting you nor giving any pointers to the wolves and the lions and the snakes, that you're still here, Mr. Lord Man! That's part of the story of how you got to be lord of creation. Now listen to the rest of it:[27] [27] Here imagine Brer Bear putting on his specs and reading from the book.