The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-11-14
THE BEAR THAT
 HELD UP TRAINS Only Seeking to Yank His Recreant Master Into
 Duty's Path HE DESERVED TO LIVE But He Had a Long and a Hard Road to
 Travel.
HE DESERVED TO LIVE

T made up my mind that when I went into the coal regions again on a trip" said John Gilbert, the trav- cling groeer5man, T would find out what the fate was of the big brown bear, which they told me on my iast trip was then at large in the Ararat country having in his possession the flagstaff of locomotive, with the red signal flag attached to 1t, with whicn he was causing no little annoyance to railroad men by suddenly appearing on the track ahead of approaching trains, the danger signal clutsned in his forepaws, and compelling the en- gineers either to come to a stop or take the chances of throwing laelr trains in the ditch by attempting to run the bear down, When they told me this all could find 1t in me to say was
 !" 'MercyH
 Oh, we'll they said, it is only tame bear. At least, it was only tame bear
 Then they told me how yhis bear came into the enjoyment of the pas time it seemed to find in the manipu- lation of the flagstaff with the red fleg on It.
 Seems to me they said that it was then about a month since the bear had come into the coal region there- abouts, in company with son of Italy who was showing off the tricks 1t not,ld da aud y,rbi1a stnuyi,.c- +L5,,. ;. ee In the streets of one of the big towns one day he was joined in the task by a collection of hoodlums, who had made up their minds to put the bear through some performances that ware not on the program, Against this the bears master had protested with such @ fine Italian hand, yielding as 1t did a long and heavy staff that several of the amateur local bear trainers were put out of business, although pistol had gone off in the hands of one of them, lodging bullet in the Italians shoulder, This dropped the curtain on the show, and the son of Italy, hustling his bear along shook the dust of the town from his feet, not tarry- ing long enough to even have his shot up shoulder attended to.
 "FIe travelled northward, so they told me and he must have done so or he wouldn't have landed at the little settlement along one of the railroads, where they said he had and where his bear began to enjoy life When he arrived there he made up his mind to have the bullet removed from his shoulder, and the doing of this neces- sitated his going to another town some miles away where there was doctor He made dlcker with a sympathetic farmer, whose name they told me was Ebenezer Woolcott who for a consid- eration to be afterward in hand paid agreed to house and cater to the bear until the Italian could get out of the hands of the doctor and coms back jAt the time was up there he had not yet come back nor had he been heard of And things had happened.
 "The bear had been in Farmer IWoolcott's charge three weeks, hav- ing comfortable quarters in the wood shed, which adjolned the family kitchen they said and Just an hour Ibefore daylight one morning the we 9k before I made this trip up there, the Woolcott family were awakened by a tremendous hubbub in the kitchen, and, according to the way was in- formed, the farmer and hls hired man together with other members of the family, bestirred themselves for an sn- vestigation. Proceeding to the kitchen they were amazed to find their bear boarder doing what might have been called hilarious cake walk around the room with a kitchen chair for a partner. He was giving voice to fre- quent shorts and yelps of unmistaka- ble enjoyment and surprised as the farmer was, he sized up the situation at once.
 The ding Eyetalian bruin Is as drunk as tinkerp
 And they assured, me that such was indeed the lamentable fact. The bear had broken out of the wood house into the kitchen through rhs connecting door. The cellar door opened off the kitchen and the door leading to 1t had been left open the night before. They did not go so far as to tell me that the bear knew there was a barrel of hard cider in the eel lar, but there was no hesitancy or faltering in their assurance that the bear had gone down Into the cellar, lpulled the spigot out of the barrel of hard cider and when the running, cd- CT had made pools in depressions in the cellar floor had lapped it up with such gusto and in such volume that lwhen he returned to the kitchen he toted with him jag, whi3h, from what they told me, I assume would have made trouble at mixed ale party.
 "It was under the exhilaratins in- fuence of this jag that the bear had opened the program of entertainments the execution of which had called the iWoolcott family to the kitchen at that unseemly hour. When the household intruded upon the bear and he had got a focus on it, he dropped the chair he was waltzing with, made 6 ,,lr2h ) for the hired man got hla and went whirling around the room with him. : Now, as any man hired or unhlred, might reasonably be expecte1 to yell Justify for help under such conditions, : if they had told me that Farmer ] tiWoolcott's man hadn't done so on this occasion I would scarcely nave be- lieved them. But they told n9 that he had, and so, of course, I couldn't , doubt. I would have given almost ! anything to have had just 8 look at this hired man and the rest Of 'em.