"KITTY, YOU CAN'T HAVE MY APPLE."—Engraved from a Picture by F. Dielman, by Permission of R. E. Moore, American Art Gallery, New York.
A BEAR STORY.
BY EMILY H. LELAND.
A good many years ago, when the century was young, there came to live in the big forests of Northern Vermont a man and his wife and their little boy. Partly because they liked to be high up out of the fogs and damp, and partly because there was little else but hilly land in that part of the country, they built their cabin at the top of a nice baby mountain, which was covered at the back with an immense orchard of maples and butternuts, but which was quite bare and steep at the east side, and had rocks cropping out which the farmer thought would be fine for building a good stone house with some day.
It was long, hard work starting a farm in a place where there was nothing but woods; but after a year or so had passed by, and enough trees had been cleared away to make room for a corn field and a potato patch, and a little chicken-house and cow-shed had been added to their log-cabin, the young farmer used to sit down before their rough stone fire-place, with its bright crackling fire, and trot his boy to sleep upon his knee, while he watched the pretty young mamma putting away the supper things, thinking all the time what a rich and happy man he was. And when at last a pig-pen was joined to the cow-shed, and two cunning little pink-nosed pigs had been bought of a neighbor five miles away, and placed in it, he felt richer and grander than many a man does nowadays who owns a railroad.
And how they grew, those pink-nosed pigs! They had a southern exposure, good drainage, plenty of dry leaves and moss for bedding, and an abundance of milk, with an occasional handful of cracked corn or a pint of mashed potatoes. How could they help growing? The farmer took great delight in feeding them, and his wife would sometimes ask him, with a laugh, "Now, Stephen, which do you love the most—the pigs or our little 'Lisha?"
Elisha was the baby's name. They hadn't thought of such names as Carl and Claude and Clarence in those days.