As a consequence of the tensions thus produced in his thoughts and feelings , he wrote on the one hand sketches of idealized hunting trips and on the other an anecdote of the village of Hardscrabble , Arkansas , where no one had ever seen a piano ; and he wrote also the masterpiece of frontier humor , ``The Big Bear of Arkansas", in which earthy realism is placed alongside the exaggeration of the backwoods tall-tale and the awe with which man contemplates the grandeur and the mysteries of nature .