When he reached the bank his self-confidence returned, and he remembered all the things he had said he would do if he should meet a bear.
The bear had caught the fish, and again had climbed upon the log, where he was deliberately devouring them.
This was Little Balser's chance for death—to the bear. Quickly snatching up the gun, he rested it in the fork of a small tree near by, took deliberate aim at the bear, which was not five yards away, and shot him through the heart. The bear dropped into the water dead, and floated downstream a little way, where he lodged at a ripple a short distance below.
Balser, after he had killed the bear, became more frightened than he had been at any time during the adventure, and ran home screaming. That afternoon his father went to the scene of battle and took the bear out of the water. It was very fat and large, and weighed, so Mr. Brent said, over six hundred pounds.
Balser was firmly of the opinion that he himself was also very fat and large, and weighed at least as much as the bear. He was certainly entitled to feel "big"; for he had got himself out of an ugly scrape in a brave, manly, and cool-headed manner, and had achieved a victory of which a man might have been proud.
The news of Balser's adventure soon spread among the neighbors and he became quite a hero; for the bear he had killed was one of the largest that had ever been seen in that neighborhood, and, besides the gallons of rich bear oil it yielded, there were three or four hundred pounds of bear meat; and no other food is more strengthening for winter diet.
There was also the soft, furry skin, which Balser's mother tanned, and with it made a coverlid for Balser's bed, under which he and his little brother lay many a cold night, cozy and "snug as a bug in a rug."
[385]
The selection that follows may serve as an example of an effective Christmas story in the latest fashion. It was not written especially for young people, but neither were many of the books that now stand on the shelf that holds their favorites. It is not only one of the great short stories, but one of the shortest of great-stories. It is quite worthy of use in company with Dickens' Christmas Carol, Henry van Dyke's The Other Wise Man, and Thomas Nelson Page's Santa Claus's Partner, at the Christmas season, and it has the advantages of extreme brevity, a fresh breeziness of style, surprise in the plot, and romantic interest. The magi brought various gifts to the Child in the manger—gold, frankincense, myrrh—but only one gift, that of love. O. Henry does not often moralize, but no reader ever finds fault with his concluding paragraph. The author's real name was William Sidney Porter. He was born in Greensboro, N. C., in 1862, and died in New York City, in 1910, the most widely read of short-story writers. "The Gift of the Magi" is taken from the volume called The Four Million by special arrangement with the publishers. (Copyright, Doubleday, Page & Co. New York.)