"'One night I'm coon huntin'. The dogs trees over on Rapid Run. When I arrives, the whole pack is cirkled 'round the base of a big beech, singin'; my old Andrew Jackson dog leadin' the choir with the air, an' my Thomas Benton dog growlin' bass, while the others warbles what parts they will, indiscrim'nate. "'Nacherally, the dogs can't climb the tree none, an' I has to make that play myse'f. I lays down my gun, an' shucks my belts an' knife, an' goes swarmin' up the beech. It's shorely a teedious enterprise, an' some rough besides. That beech seems as full of spikes an' thorns as a honey locust--its a sort o' porkypine of a tree. "'Which I works my lacerated way into the lower branches, an' then, glances up ag'in the firmaments to locate the coon. He ain't vis'ble none; he's higher up an' the leaves an' bresh hides him. I goes on till I'm twenty foot from the ground; then I looks up ag'in, "'Gents, it ain't no coon; it's a b'ar, black as paint an' as big as a baggage wagon. He ain't two foot above me too; an' the sight of him, settin' thar like a black bale of cotton, an' his nearness, an' partic'larly a few terse remarks he lets drop, comes mighty clost to astonishin' me to death. I thinks of my gun; an' then I lets go all bolts to go an' get it. Shore, I falls outen the tree; thar ain't no time to descend slow an' dignified. "'As I comes crashin' along through them beech boughs, it inculcates a misonderstandin' among the dogs. Andrew Jackson, Thomas Benton an' the others is convoked about that tree on a purely coon theery. They expects me to knock the coon down to 'em. They shorely do not expect me to come tumblin' none myse'f. It tharfore befalls that when I makes my deboo among 'em, them canines, blinded an' besotted as I say with thoughts of coon, prounces upon me in a body. Every dog rends off a speciment of me. They don't bite twice; they perceives by the taste that it ain't no coon an' desists. "'Which I don't reckon their worryin' me would have become a continyoous performance nohow; for me an' the dogs is hardly tangled up that a-way, when we're interfered with by the b'ar. Looks like the example I sets is infectious; for when I lets go, the b'ar lets go; an' I hardly hits the ground an' becomes the ragin' center of interest to Andrew Jackson, Thomas Benton an' them others, when the b'ar is down on all of us like the old Cumberland on a sandbar doorin' a spring rise. I shore regyards his advent that a-way as the day of jedgment.