Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

A day or two since, as Mr. Solomon Reed, of Dorset, Vt. was cutting wood, at some distance from his house, a very large bear stole up behind and ordered him to stop. He let fly his axe at Bruin, but it missed, and Bruin, in turn, let fly at him. Solomon then seized a club, and laid the blows upon his shaggy adversary so heavily that it broke, and he began to think that he should have to knock under. Not having the wherewithal to knock him with, he made use of his fists, expecting every minute that he should be compelled to cave in. A dreadful hug followed, and the two rolled over the ground like a couple of wrestlers in a ring. Not liking to bear it in this fashion, Solomon by a desperate effort, got down Bruin holding his head down, and setting plump astride of the beast. The latter, however soon began to “bear” up, and all at once took to his heals like an infuriated bull. Solomon all the while astride, and compelling the bear to follow his own nose, with as slight a deviation of his jaws from a straight line as possible.
On they drove at a furious rate, the rider and the ridden, the former endeavoring to make a bridle out of the bear’s ears, and the bear striving as hard to make a bit out of the man’s arm. Solomon began to fear, at the rate he was going, that his steed was fast taken him into a whole nest of bears, and probably soliloquized:
‘Better to bear the ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.”
While in this predicament, Mr. Reed’s son happened to overtake them on their journey, and settled all uncertainties, by immediately knocking the bear in the head with his axe. Mr. Solomon Reed got some scratches in the scuffle, and Bruin’s fat carcass to boot, which by the way, he immediately salted down for family use. [Lowell [Mass] Courier.