BY GASTON V. DRAKE.
II.—FROM JACK TO BOB.
Boston, June —, 18—.
Dear Bob,—Got your letter last night. Wish I was going to Hoboken with you, but most of all I wish you were going to be at the Mountain House. I got a letter from our old friend Sandboys the bell-boy, last month, and judging from what he says in it there's going to be lots of fun up there this summer with the bears. He says there never was such a lot of bears anywhere before. I hardly know whether to believe what he says or not, but there's one parrygraph in his letter that is very interesting. This is it. I've copied it off "verby tim," as Dad calls it. He says, "We don't know whether we can get the hotel opened this season or not on account of them bears. About two months ago the Colonel sent over for me and asked me if I wouldn't go up to the Notch with him and help unlock the doors and start things along and I said yes I would. You know in a big hotel like that with three hundred and forty rooms it's pretty hard work getting it ready for the summer season, and you have to begin very early to put things to rights, so along about April the Colonel generally sends for me and we go up there to see how things are going. So as I say I said yes I would and I got ready to go, but the day before the one we were to go on the Colonel sent me a telegraph message saying that he couldn't get away and asking would I mind going up alone. So I said no I wouldn't and went. It was about the twenty-first of April when I got there and the snow was pretty deep, but it was crusted hard enough on top for me to walk on, so I slid around to where the front door was, but couldn't get in there because the snow came up to the second story. Then I slid around to the back door and found the snow there had drifted up as high as the third story, but there was an open window that I could climb in through and through I clumb, exclaiming as I did so against the carelessness of the people that had left it open. Little did I dream how unjust I was, but later on I found out. I went through the room out into the hall, and thence down stairs to the office floor, where what did I see sitting in the Colonel's big arm-chair back of the counter but a huge black bear, his fore-paws folded over his chest and his head thrown back, blinking his eyes at the ceiling! I was transfigured with terror, being unarmed and little expecting to see a bear in that place. I turned quickly about and started to sneak back up stairs the way I had come when what should I see playing in the hall in front of your old room, the door of which was open, but two roly-poly cubs, having the finest time imaginable. As soon as they saw me they gave a squeak and rushed in head over heels into the room and would you believe it slammed the door after them! Well, I didn't know what to make of it, and my first, thought was to get away as fast as I could, but remembering that in my room on the top floor under the cupola I had left a book I had given me by one of last year's guests, I went up to get it, and really and truly, Jack, there stretched at full length on my bed was another bear. This time I was thoroughly scared out of my wits, and the first thing I knew I had given a cry of fear and of course that attracted the bear's attention. As soon as he caught sight of me he sprang up off the bed and chased me down the stairs along the hall to the East side, then down the next stairs along the lower hall to the West side, and so we went lickety-split up and down those halls like lightning. He could gain on me in the halls having twice as many legs as I have, but I could gain on him on the stairs, by sliding down the banisters, which was a trick he hadn't learned. Finally we got to the ground-floor, and I dashed along through the office, past the first bear who was still blinking at the ceiling in the Colonel's chair behind the counter. The bear that was chasing me was now gaining constantly. By the time we had got to the last flight of stairs he had learned, by watching me go down, how to slide on the banisters himself, so I couldn't gain an inch there, and he roared like a thunder-storm all the time, which was very destroying to my nerves. I tell you I thought my last hour had come, but I didn't sit down to cry about it. I just kept on and as luck would have it managed to jump into the elevator and slam the iron-barred door in his face just as he was about to grab me."
"My! Didn't I sit down and pant and wasn't I glad that elevator door was made of iron, for as I sat there the roaring and raving of my particular enemy seemed to summon bears from everywhere. They rushed in from all sides. Three came from the writing-room, one from the Post-office, five from the parlors, and no end of 'em, big bears, little bears, and middle-sized bears, came tumbling down the stairs to see what the trouble was, and then I saw what had happened. Every blooming bear in New Hampshire had deserted his den to come and live in the hotel! I gave myself up for lost. I knew if I tried to get out of that elevator they'd pounce on me, and if I didn't get out I'd either freeze or starve to death, and it was sickening to think of, but all of a sudden an idea came to me. The elevator was one of these hydrahaulic lifts and it occurred to me that there might be enough water left in the tank to make it go up if I pulled the rope. It was worth trying anyhow, and I did it. As I had hoped, it worked and to the astonishment of the Colonel's unexpected guests, I and my room shot up to the third story, where, all the bears being down stairs, I got out in safety, and rushed down the hallway to the room with the open window. Then I closed the door quickly behind me and locked it, as a precaution in case of pursuit, and jumping out of the window I escaped.
"It was a terrible experience and I've found one or two white hairs in my head since. The Colonel was very angry about it, but of course it was nobody's fault. The window was opened by the bears themselves. It must have been, because the housekeeper says she closed it herself, and as for locking it, she says she didn't think it necessary to lock a third-story window to keep out bears.
"Just what is to be done about getting 'em out nobody seems to know yet, but it is probable that the Colonel will call out his regiment and go up there and engage them in a long and bloody conflict as the historians say. If he does, I'm going with him, but I'm to have charge of the provisions and not do any of the fighting, because the Colonel thinks I've had escapes enough for one year."
How's that for a tale? I think it's great, but I don't want to go to any such place as that alone. If you were going I wouldn't be scared of a thousand bears, but all by myself I don't even care to fight one of 'em. Can't you get your Dad to change his mind?