30 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

bear family, but why the full-grown man
should so continually persist in caging this
shaggy-coated, dignified, kingly and an-
cient brother of his, I cannot see, unless it
is that he knows almost nothing at all of
his better nature, his shy, innocent love of
a joke, his partiality for music and his im-
perial disdain of death. And so, with a
desire that man may know a little more
about this storied and classic creature
which, with noiseless and stately tread, has
come down to us out of the past, and is as
quietly passing away from the face of the
earth, these fragmentary facts are set
down. But first as to his love of music. A
bear loves music better than he loves
honey, and that is saying that he loves
music better than he loves his life.

We were going to mill, father and I, and
Lyte Howard, in Oregon, about forty years
ago, with ox-teams, a dozen or two bags of
wheat, threshed with a flail and winnowed
with a wagon cover, and were camped for
the night by the Calipoola River; for it took