The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1894-10-02
THE ARIZONA KICKER.
A Little Vacation in Which the Editor
Faces a Grizzly.


AN EDITORIAL OUTINa.-We must
beg the indulgence of our readers this
week for issuing The KICKER two days
late, and for the woeful lack of editorial
and local matters. Last Saturday we
had an invitation to join a party of
campers on Bill Williams mountain,
and family doctor looked at our
editorial tongue and advised Ms to &C.
cept. We found the party pleasantly
located at an altitude of 2 ,784 feet above
the sea. There we're five gentlemen
from Cincinnati, a poet from ST. Louis
and an artist from Chicago. On the
morning of the second day we set out
to show the artist a grand cliff which
he proposed to transfer to canvass, and
the poet went along IN hopes to catch a
happy inspiration. The three of u
had nearly reached cliff when We sud
denly encountered a grizzly bear who
was out for business. The surprise was
mutual, but the pleasure seemed to be
all on one side. The artist disappeared
among the rocks 70 the right AID the
poet among the brush to the left, and
for 60 seconds we were left facing old
Ephriam with a dim consciousness that
something was about to happen.
For the benefit of such of our readers
as haven't studied natural history, we
will state that the grizzly bear is an
animal about the size of a Queen Anne
cottage and appears to have a veranda
built all around him to mprove his
style of architure. He differs from an
elephant in having teeth about a foot
long, and no one hearing his claws rat
Ting on the rocks could mistake him
for buffalo bull. Way back, before
Christopher Columbus discovered
America, something happened to make
the grizzly bear mad at all mankind,
and this feeling has descended down to
the latest edition. That bear has not
only got his dGnder up lrside OF 10 SEC
onds, but it wasn't halt a minute before
he had fully made up his mind that we
we're his mutton. When he moved for
us, we moved for a tree. We beat him
by q few seconds. We never had any
particular business dealings with a
grizzly bear before, but it struck us
that we couldn't move too rapidly nor
climb too high. When we recovered
consciousness, we Wer seated on the
limb Of a tree 30 feet above the earth,
and the bear was looking up at us with
an expression of curiosity and disap-
pointment. At some stageof the game
he may have run across an Arizona
editor who had failed in business and
committed suicide, but we don't believe
he had ever q a live one before. He
had counted on a sure thing and got
left, and for some minutes his chagrin
was plainly apparent. We supposed,
as a matter of course, that after realiz
ing the situation the critter would start
off with ambition to pick up the artist
or the poet, but he wanted editorial
meat and was willing to wait for it. 1t
was 10 o'clock in the morning when he
freed us. We were there at high noon,
at shutdown, at daybreak next morn
ing. The bear staid right by us, and
we staid right by the bear. There was
but little romance in the situation for
us, and we couldn't say that the bear
appeared to take solid comfort, We
had never seen anything in natural
history about a man up a treein Arizona
and a grizzly waiting for him to drop
into a red mouthed cavern ornamented
with ivory spikes and could only give
a rough guess as to how long the situa-
| ton would continue to be strained. We
! weresomewhat troubled with insomnia,
but so was the bear, and this latter fact
! was something of a consolation. We
had to keep awake to maintain our hold
! ON the limb, and he had to do the same