University of Virginia Library

BABY SYLVESTER.

IT was at a little mining-camp in the California
Sierras that he first dawned upon me
in all his grotesque sweetness.

I had arrived early in the morning, but not in
time to intercept the friend who was the object
of my visit. He had gone “prospecting,” — so
they told me on the river, — and would not probably
return until late in the afternoon. They
could not say what direction he had taken;
they could not suggest that I would be likely to
find him if I followed. But it was the general
opinion that I had better wait.

I looked around me. I was standing upon
the bank of the river; and apparently the only
other human beings in the world were my interlocutors,
who were even then just disappearing
from my horizon, down the steep bank, toward
the river's dry bed. I approached the edge of
the bank.

Where could I wait?

Oh! anywhere, — down with them on the riverbar,
where they were working, if I liked. Or I

could make myself at home in any of those
cabins that I found lying round loose. Or perhaps
it would be cooler and pleasanter for me
in my friend's cabin on the hill. Did I see
those three large sugar-pines, and, a little to
the right, a canvas roof and chimney, over the
bushes? Well, that was my friend's, — that
was Dick Sylvester's cabin. I could stake my
horse in that little hollow, and just hang round
there till he came. I would find some books in
the shanty. I could amuse myself with them;
or I could play with the baby.

Do what?

But they had already gone. I leaned over
the bank, and called after their vanishing
figures, —

“What did you say I could do?”

The answer floated slowly up on the hot,
sluggish air, —

“Pla-a-y with the ba-by.”

The lazy echoes took it up, and tossed it languidly
from hill to hill, until Bald Mountain
opposite made some incoherent remark about
the baby; and then all was still.

I must have been mistaken. My friend was
not a man of family; there was not a woman
within forty miles of the river camp; he never
was so passionately devoted to children as to
import a luxury so expensive. I must have
been mistaken.

I turned my horse's head toward the hill.
As we slowly climbed the narrow trail, the little
settlement might have been some exhumed
Pompeiian suburb, so deserted and silent were
its habitations. The open doors plainly disclosed
each rudely-furnished interior, — the
rough pine table, with the scant equipage of
the morning meal still standing; the wooden
bunk, with its tumbled and dishevelled blankets.
A golden lizard, the very genius of desolate
stillness, had stopped breathless upon the
threshold of one cabin; a squirrel peeped impudently
into the window of another; a woodpecker,
with the general flavor of undertaking
which distinguishes that bird, withheld his
sepulchral hammer from the coffin-lid of the
roof on which he was professionally engaged,
as we passed. For a moment I half regretted
that I had not accepted the invitation to the
river-bed; but, the next moment, a breeze
swept up the long, dark cañon, and the waiting
files of the pines beyond bent toward me in salutation.
I think my horse understood, as well
as myself, that it was the cabins that made the
solitude human, and therefore unbearable; for
he quickened his pace, and with a gentle trot
brought me to the edge of the wood, and the
three pines that stood like vedettes before the
Sylvester outpost.

Unsaddling my horse in the little hollow, I
unslung the long riata from the saddle-bow,
and, tethering him to a young sapling, turned
toward the cabin. But I had gone only a few
steps, when I heard a quick trot behind me; and
poor Pomposo, with every fibre tingling with
fear, was at my heels. I looked hurriedly
around. The breeze had died away; and only
an occasional breath from the deep-chested
woods, more like a long sigh than any articulate
sound, or the dry singing of a cicala in the
heated cañon, were to be heard. I examined
the ground carefully for rattlesnakes, but in
vain. Yet here was Pomposo shivering from
his arched neck to his sensitive haunches, his
very flanks pulsating with terror. I soothed
him as well as I could, and then walked to the
edge of the wood, and peered into its dark
recesses. The bright flash of a bird's wing, or
the quick dart of a squirrel, was all I saw. I
confess it was with something of superstitious
expectation that I again turned towards the
cabin. A fairy-child, attended by Titania and
her train, lying in an expensive cradle, would
not have surprised me: a Sleeping Beauty,
whose awakening would have repeopled these
solitudes with life and energy, I am afraid I
began to confidently look for, and would have
kissed without hesitation.

But I found none of these. Here was the
evidence of my friend's taste and refinement, in
the hearth swept scrupulously clean, in the picturesque
arrangement of the fur-skins that covered
the floor and furniture, and the striped
serápe[1] lying on the wooden couch. Here were
the walls fancifully papered with illustrations
from “The London News;” here was the wood-cut
portrait of Mr. Emerson over the chimney,
quaintly framed with blue-jays' wings; here were
his few favorite books on the swinging-shelf;
and here, lying upon the couch, the latest copy
of “Punch.” Dear Dick! The flour-sack was
sometimes empty; but the gentle satirist seldom
missed his weekly visit.

I threw myself on the couch, and tried to
read. But I soon exhausted my interest in my
friend's library, and lay there staring through
the open door on the green hillside beyond. The
breeze again sprang up; and a delicious coolness,
mixed with the rare incense of the woods, stole
through the cabin. The slumbrous droning of
bumblebees outside the canvas roof, the faint
cawing of rooks on the opposite mountain, and
the fatigue of my morning ride, began to droop
my eyelids. I pulled the serápe over me, as a

precaution against the freshening mountain
breeze, and in a few moments was asleep.

I do not remember how long I slept. I must
have been conscious, however, during my slumber,
of my inability to keep myself covered by
the serápe; for I awoke once or twice, clutching
it with a despairing hand as it was disappearing
over the foot of the couch. Then I became
suddenly aroused to the fact that my efforts to
retain it were resisted by some equally persistent
force; and, letting it go, I was horrified at seeing
it swiftly drawn under the couch. At this
point I sat up, completely awake; for immediately
after, what seemed to be an exaggerated
muff began to emerge from under the couch.
Presently it appeared fully, dragging the serápe
after it. There was no mistaking it now: it
was a baby-bear, — a mere suckling, it was true,
a helpless roll of fat and fur, but unmistakably
a grizzly cub!

I cannot recall any thing more irresistibly
ludicrous than its aspect as it slowly raised its
small, wondering eyes to mine. It was so much
taller on its haunches than its shoulders, its
forelegs were so disproportionately small, that,
in walking, its hind-feet invariably took precedence.
It was perpetually pitching forward over
its pointed, inoffensive nose, and recovering itself
always, after these involuntary somersaults,

with the gravest astonishment. To add to its
preposterous appearance, one of its hind-feet
was adorned by a shoe of Sylvester's, into which
it had accidentally and inextricably stepped.
As this somewhat impeded its first impulse to
fly, it turned to me; and then, possibly recognizing
in the stranger the same species as its
master, it paused. Presently it slowly raised
itself on its hind-legs, and vaguely and deprecatingly
waved a baby-paw, fringed with little
hooks of steel. I took the paw, and shook it
gravely. From that moment we were friends.
The little affair of the serápe was forgotten.

Nevertheless, I was wise enough to cement
our friendship by an act of delicate courtesy.
Following the direction of his eyes, I had no
difficulty in finding on a shelf near the ridgepole
the sugar-box and the square lumps of
white sugar that even the poorest miner is
never without. While he was eating them, I had
time to examine him more closely. His body
was a silky, dark, but exquisitely-modulated
gray, deepening to black in his paws and muzzle.
His fur was excessively long, thick, and soft as
eider-down; the cushions of flesh beneath perfectly
infantine in their texture and contour.
He was so very young, that the palms of his
half-human feet were still tender as a baby's.
Except for the bright blue, steely hooks, half-sheathed

in his little toes, there was not a single
harsh outline or detail in his plump figure. He
was as free from angles as one of Leda's offspring.
Your caressing hand sank away in his
fur with dreamy languor. To look at him long
was an intoxication of the senses; to pat him
was a wild delirium; to embrace him, an utter
demoralization of the intellectual faculties.

When he had finished the sugar, he rolled
out of the door with a half-diffident, half-inviting
look in his eyes as if he expected me
to follow. I did so; but the sniffing and snorting
of the keen-scented Pomposo in the hollow
not only revealed the cause of his former terror,
but decided me to take another direction.
After a moment's hesitation, he concluded to go
with me, although I am satisfied, from a certain
impish look in his eye, that he fully understood
and rather enjoyed the fright of Pomposo. As
he rolled along at my side, with a gait not unlike
a drunken sailor, I discovered that his long
hair concealed a leather collar around his neck,
which bore for its legend the single word
“Baby!” I recalled the mysterious suggestion
of the two miners. This, then, was the “baby”
with whom I was to “play.”

How we “played;” how Baby allowed me
to roll him down hill, crawling and puffing up
again each time with perfect good-humor; how

he climbed a young sapling after my Panama
hat, which I had “shied” into one of the topmost
branches; how, after getting it, he refused
to descend until it suited his pleasure; how,
when he did come down, he persisted in
walking about on three legs, carrying my hat, a
crushed and shapeless mass, clasped to his breast
with the remaining one; how I missed him at
last, and finally discovered him seated on a
table in one of the tenantless cabins, with a
bottle of sirup between his paws, vainly
endeavoring to extract its contents, — these and
other details of that eventful day I shall not
weary the reader with now. Enough that, when
Dick Sylvester returned, I was pretty well
fagged out, and the baby was rolled up, an immense
bolster, at the foot of the couch, asleep.
Sylvester's first words after our greeting
were, —

“Isn't he delicious?”

“Perfectly. Where did you get him?”

“Lying under his dead mother, five miles
from here,” said Dick, lighting his pipe.
“Knocked her over at fifty yards: perfectly
clean shot; never moved afterwards. Baby
crawled out, scared, but unhurt. She must
have been carrying him in her mouth, and
dropped him when she faced me; for he wasn't
more than three days old, and not steady on his

pins. He takes the only milk that comes to the
settlement, brought up by Adams Express at
seven o'clock every morning. They say he
looks like me. Do you think so?” asked Dick
with perfect gravity, stroking his hay-colored
mustachios, and evidently assuming his best
expression.

I took leave of the baby early the next morning
in Sylvester's cabin, and, out of respect to
Pomposo's feelings, rode by without any postscript
of expression. But the night before I
had made Sylvester solemnly swear, that, in the
event of any separation between himself and
Baby, it should revert to me. “At the same
time,” he had added, “it's only fair to say that
I don't think of dying just yet, old fellow; and
I don't know of any thing else that would part
the cub and me.”

Two months after this conversation, as I was
turning over the morning's mail at my office in
San Francisco, I noticed a letter bearing Sylvester's
familiar hand. But it was post-marked
“Stockton,” and I opened it with some anxiety
at once. Its contents were as follows: —

I am afraid that my desire to possess myself
of Baby overcame all other considerations; and I
telegraphed an affirmative at once to Sylvester.
When I reached my lodgings late that afternoon,
my landlady was awaiting me with a
telegram. It was two lines from Sylvester, —

S.”

It was due, then, at one o'clock that night.

For a moment I was staggered at my own precipitation.
I had as yet made no preparations,
had said nothing to my landlady about her new
guest. I expected to arrange every thing in
time; and now, through Sylvester's indecent
haste, that time had been shortened twelve
hours.

Something, however, must be done at once.
I turned to Mrs. Brown. I had great reliance
in her maternal instincts: I had that still
greater reliance common to our sex in the
general tender-heartedness of pretty women.
But I confess I was alarmed. Yet, with a
feeble smile, I tried to introduce the subject
with classical ease and lightness. I even said,
“If Shakspeare's Athenian clown, Mrs. Brown,
believed that a lion among ladies was a dreadful
thing, what must” — But here I broke
down; for Mrs. Brown, with the awful intuition
of her sex, I saw at once was more occupied
with my manner than my speech. So I tried a
business brusquerie, and, placing the telegram
in her hand, said hurriedly, “We must do something
about this at once. It's perfectly absurd;
but he will be here at one to-night. Beg
thousand pardons; but business prevented my
speaking before” — and paused out of breath
and courage.

Mrs. Brown read the telegram gravely, lifted

her pretty eyebrows, turned the paper over, and
looked on the other side, and then, in a remote
and chilling voice, asked me if she understood
me to say that the mother was coming also.

“Oh, dear no!” I exclaimed with considerable
relief. “The mother is dead, you know. Sylvester,
that is my friend who sent this, shot
her when the baby was only three days old.”
But the expression of Mrs. Brown's face at this
moment was so alarming, that I saw that nothing
but the fullest explanation would save me.
Hastily, and I fear not very coherently, I told
her all.

She relaxed sweetly. She said I had frightened
her with my talk about lions. Indeed, I
think my picture of poor Baby, albeit a trifle
highly colored, touched her motherly heart.
She was even a little vexed at what she called
Sylvester's “hardheartedness.” Still I was not
without some apprehension. It was two months
since I had seen him; and Sylvester's vague
allusion to his “slinging an ugly left” pained
me. I looked at sympathetic little Mrs. Brown;
and the thought of Watson's pups covered me
with guilty confusion.

Mrs. Brown had agreed to sit up with me
until he arrived. One o'clock came, but no
Baby. Two o'clock, three o'clock, passed. It
was almost four when there was a wild clatter

of horses' hoofs outside, and with a jerk a
wagon stopped at the door. In an instant I
had opened it, and confronted a stranger. Almost
at the same moment, the horses attempted
to run away with the wagon.

The stranger's appearance was, to say the
least, disconcerting. His clothes were badly
torn and frayed; his linen sack hung from his
shoulders like a herald's apron; one of his
hands was bandaged; his face scratched; and
there was no hat on his dishevelled head. To
add to the general effect, he had evidently
sought relief from his woes in drink; and he
swayed from side to side as he clung to the
door-handle, and, in a very thick voice, stated
that he had “suthin” for me outside. When
he had finished, the horses made another plunge.

Mrs. Brown thought they must be frightened
at something.

“Frightened!” laughed the stranger with
bitter irony. “Oh, no! Hossish ain't frightened!
On'y ran away four timesh comin' here. Oh,
no! Nobody's frightened. Every thin's all ri'.
Ain't it, Bill?” he said, addressing the driver.
“On'y been overboard twish; knocked down a
hatchway once. Thash nothin'! On'y two
men unner doctor's han's at Stockton. Thash
nothin'! Six hunner dollarsh cover all dammish.”

I was too much disheartened to reply, but
moved toward the wagon. The stranger eyed
me with an astonishment that almost sobered
him.

“Do you reckon to tackle that animile yourself?”
he asked, as he surveyed me from head
to foot.

I did not speak, but, with an appearance of
boldness I was far from feeling, walked to the
wagon, and called “Baby!”

“All ri'. Cash loose them straps, Bill, and
stan' clear.”

The straps were cut loose; and Baby, the remorseless,
the terrible, quietly tumbled to the
ground, and, rolling to my side, rubbed his
foolish head against me.

I think the astonishment of the two men was
beyond any vocal expression. Without a word,
the drunken stranger got into the wagon, and
drove away.

And Baby? He had grown, it is true, a trifle
larger; but he was thin, and bore the marks
of evident ill usage. His beautiful coat was
matted and unkempt; and his claws, those
bright steel hooks, had been ruthlessly pared to
the quick. His eyes were furtive and restless;
and the old expression of stupid good humor
had changed to one of intelligent distrust. His
intercourse with mankind had evidently quickened

his intellect, without broadening his moral
nature.

I had great difficulty in keeping Mrs. Brown
from smothering him in blankets, and ruining
his digestion with the delicacies of her larder;
but I at last got him completely rolled up in
the corner of my room, and asleep. I lay awake
some time later with plans for his future. I
finally determined to take him to Oakland —
where I had built a little cottage, and always
spent my Sundays — the very next day. And
in the midst of a rosy picture of domestic
felicity, I fell asleep.

When I awoke, it was broad day. My eyes
at once sought the corner where Baby had
been lying; but he was gone. I sprang from
the bed, looked under it, searched the closet,
but in vain. The door was still locked; but
there were the marks of his blunted claws upon
the sill of the window that I had forgotten to
close. He had evidently escaped that way.
But where? The window opened upon a
balcony, to which the only other entrance was
through the hall. He must be still in the
house.

My hand was already upon the bell-rope; but
I stayed it in time. If he had not made himself
known, why should I disturb the house? I
dressed myself hurriedly, and slipped into the

hall. The first object that met my eyes was a
boot lying upon the stairs. It bore the marks
of Baby's teeth; and, as I looked along the hall,
I saw too plainly that the usual array of freshly-blackened
boots and shoes before the lodgers'
doors was not there. As I ascended the stairs,
I found another, but with the blacking carefully
licked off. On the third floor were two
or three more boots, slightly mouthed; but at
this point Baby's taste for blacking had evidently
palled. A little farther on was a ladder,
leading to an open scuttle. I mounted the
ladder, and reached the flat roof, that formed a
continuous level over the row of houses to the
corner of the street. Behind the chimney on
the very last roof, something was lurking. It
was the fugitive Baby. He was covered with
dust and dirt and fragments of glass. But he
was sitting on his hind-legs, and was eating an
enormous slab of peanut candy, with a look of
mingled guilt and infinite satisfaction. He
even, I fancied, slightly stroked his stomach
with his disengaged fore-paw as I approached.
He knew that I was looking for him; and the
expression of his eye said plainly, “The past,
at least, is secure.”

I hurried him, with the evidences of his
guilt, back to the scuttle, and descended on
tiptoe to the floor beneath. Providence favored

us: I met no one on the stairs; and his own
cushioned tread was inaudible. I think he was
conscious of the dangers of detection; for he
even forebore to breathe, or much less chew the
last mouthful he had taken; and he skulked
at my side with the sirup dropping from his
motionless jaws. I think he would have silently
choked to death just then, for my sake; and
it was not until I had reached my room again,
and threw myself panting on the sofa, that I
saw how near strangulation he had been. He
gulped once or twice apologetically, and then
walked to the corner of his own accord, and
rolled himself up like an immense sugarplum,
sweating remorse and treacle at every pore.

I locked him in when I went to breakfast,
when I found Mrs. Brown's lodgers in a state
of intense excitement over certain mysterious
events of the night before, and the dreadful
revelations of the morning. It appeared that
burglars had entered the block from the scuttles;
that, being suddenly alarmed, they had
quitted our house without committing any
depredation, dropping even the boots they had
collected in the halls; but that a desperate
attempt had been made to force the till in the
confectioner's shop on the corner, and that the
glass show-cases had been ruthlessly smashed.
A courageous servant in No. 4 had seen a

masked burglar, on his hands and knees, attempting
to enter their scuttle; but, on her
shouting, “Away wid yees!” he instantly fled.

I sat through this recital with cheeks that
burned uncomfortably; nor was I the less
embarrassed, on raising my eyes, to meet Mrs.
Brown's fixed curiously and mischievously on
mine. As soon as I could make my escape
from the table, I did so, and, running rapidly
up stairs, sought refuge from any possible
inquiry in my own room. Baby was still
asleep in the corner. It would not be safe to
remove him until the lodgers had gone down
town; and I was revolving in my mind the
expediency of keeping him until night veiled
his obtrusive eccentricity from the public eye,
when there came a cautious tap at my door.
I opened it. Mrs. Brown slipped in quietly,
closed the door softly, stood with her back
against it, and her hand on the knob, and beckoned
me mysteriously towards her. Then she
asked in a low voice, —

“Is hair-dye poisonous?”

I was too confounded to speak.

“Oh, do! you know what I mean,” she said
impatiently. “This stuff.” She produced suddenly
from behind her a bottle with a Greek
label so long as to run two or three times
spirally around it from top to bottom. “He

says it isn't a dye: it's a vegetable preparation,
for invigorating” —

“Who says?” I asked despairingly.

“Why, Mr. Parker, of course!” said Mrs.
Brown severely, with the air of having repeated
the name a great many times, — “the
old gentleman in the room above. The simple
question I want to ask,” she continued with
the calm manner of one who has just convicted
another of gross ambiguity of language, “is
only this: If some of this stuff were put in a
saucer, and left carelessly on the table, and a
child, or a baby, or a cat, or any young animal,
should come in at the window, and drink it up,
— a whole saucer full, — because it had a sweet
taste, would it be likely to hurt them?”

I cast an anxious glance at Baby, sleeping
peacefully in the corner, and a very grateful
one at Mrs. Brown, and said I didn't think it
would.

“Because,” said Mrs. Brown loftily as she
opened the door, “I thought, if it was poisonous,
remedies might be used in time. Because,”
she added suddenly, abandoning her lofty manner,
and wildly rushing to the corner with a
frantic embrace of the unconscious Baby,
“because, if any nasty stuff should turn its
booful hair a horrid green, or a naughty pink, it
would break its own muzzer's heart, it would!”

But, before I could assure Mrs. Brown of the
inefficiency of hair-dye as an internal application,
she had darted from the room.

That night, with the secrecy of defaulters,
Baby and I decamped from Mrs. Brown's. Distrusting
the too emotional nature of that noble
animal, the horse, I had recourse to a handcart,
drawn by a stout Irishman, to convey my
charge to the ferry. Even then, Baby refused
to go, unless I walked by the cart, and at times
rode in it.

“I wish,” said Mrs. Brown, as she stood by
the door, wrapped in an immense shawl, and
saw us depart, “I wish it looked less solemn, —
less like a pauper's funeral.”

I must admit, that, as I walked by the cart
that night, I felt very much as if I were accompanying
the remains of some humble friend to
his last resting-place; and that, when I was
obliged to ride in it, I never could entirely convince
myself that I was not helplessly overcome
by liquor, or the victim of an accident, en route
to the hospital. But at last we reached the
ferry. On the boat, I think no one discovered
Baby, except a drunken man, who approached
me to ask for a light for his cigar, but who
suddenly dropped it, and fled in dismay to the
gentlemen's cabin, where his incoherent ravings
were luckily taken for the earlier indications of
delirium tremens.

It was nearly midnight when I reached my
little cottage on the outskirts of Oakland; and
it was with a feeling of relief and security that
I entered, locked the door, and turned him
loose in the hall, satisfied that henceforward
his depredations would be limited to my own
property. He was very quiet that night; and
after he had tried to mount the hat-rack, under
the mistaken impression that it was intended
for his own gymnastic exercise, and knocked
all the hats off, he went peaceably to sleep on
the rug.

In a week, with the exercise afforded him by
the run of a large, carefully-boarded enclosure,
he recovered his health, strength, spirits, and
much of his former beauty. His presence was
unknown to my neighbors, although it was
noticeable that horses invariably “shied” in
passing to the windward of my house, and that
the baker and milkman had great difficulty in
the delivery of their wares in the morning, and
indulged in unseemly and unnecessary profanity
in so doing.

At the end of the week, I determined to invite
a few friends to see the Baby, and to that purpose
wrote a number of formal invitations.
After descanting, at some length, on the great
expense and danger attending his capture and
training, I offered a programme of the performance,

of the “Infant Phenomenon of Sierran
Solitudes,” drawn up into the highest professional
profusion of alliteration and capital letters.
A few extracts will give the reader some
idea of his educational progress: —

• 1. He will, rolled up in a Round Ball, roll down the
  Wood-Shed Rapidly, illustrating His manner of
  Escaping from His Enemy in His Native Wilds.

• 2. He will Ascend the Well-Pole, and remove from the
  Very Top a Hat, and as much of the Crown and
  Brim thereof, as May be Permitted.

• 3. He will perform in a pantomime, descriptive of the
  Conduct of the Big Bear, The Middle-Sized Bear,
  and The Little Bear of the Popular Nursery Legend.

• 4. He will shake his chain Rapidly, showing his Manner
  of striking Dismay and Terror in the Breasts of
  Wanderers in Ursine Wildernesses.

The morning of the exhibition came; but
an hour before the performance the wretched
Baby was missing. The Chinese cook could
not indicate his whereabouts. I searched the
premises thoroughly; and then, in despair,
took my hat, and hurried out into the narrow
lane that led toward the open fields and the
woods beyond. But I found no trace nor track
of Baby Sylvester. I returned, after an hour's
fruitless search, to find my guests already
assembled on the rear veranda. I briefly recounted
my disappointment, my probable loss,
and begged their assistance.

“Why,” said a Spanish friend, who prided
himself on his accurate knowledge of English,
to Barker, who seemed to be trying vainly to
rise from his reclining position on the veranda,
“why do you not disengage yourself from the
veranda of our friend? And why, in the
name of Heaven, do you attach to yourself so
much of this thing, and make to yourself such
unnecessary contortion? Ah,” he continued,
suddenly withdrawing one of his own feet from
the veranda with an evident effort, “I am
myself attached! Surely it is something here!”

It evidently was. My guests were all rising
with difficulty. The floor of the veranda was
covered with some glutinous substance. It
was — sirup!

I saw it all in a flash. I ran to the barn.
The keg of “golden sirup,” purchased only the
day before, lay empty upon the floor. There
were sticky tracks all over the enclosure, but
still no Baby.

“There's something moving the ground over
there by that pile of dirt,” said Barker.

He was right. The earth was shaking in one
corner of the enclosure like an earthquake. I
approached cautiously. I saw, what I had not
before noticed, that the ground was thrown
up; and there, in the middle of an immense
grave-like cavity, crouched Baby Sylvester, still

digging, and slowly but surely sinking from
sight in a mass of dust and clay.

What were his intentions? Whether he was
stung by remorse, and wished to hide himself
from my reproachful eyes, or whether he was
simply trying to dry his sirup-besmeared coat,
I never shall know; for that day, alas! was his
last with me.

He was pumped upon for two hours, at the
end of which time he still yielded a thin
treacle. He was then taken, and carefully
inwrapped in blankets, and locked up in the
store-room. The next morning he was gone!
The lower portion of the window sash and pane
were gone too. His successful experiments on
the fragile texture of glass at the confectioner's,
on the first day of his entrance to civilization,
had not been lost upon him. His first essay at
combining cause and effect ended in his escape.

Where he went, where he hid, who captured
him, if he did not succeed in reaching the foothills
beyond Oakland, even the offer of a large
reward, backed by the efforts of an intelligent
police, could not discover. I never saw him
again from that day until —

Did I see him? I was in a horse-car on
Sixth Avenue, a few days ago, when the horses
suddenly became unmanageable, and left the
track for the sidewalk, amid the oaths and execrations

of the driver. Immediately in front
of the car a crowd had gathered around two
performing bears and a showman. One of the
animals, thin, emaciated, and the mere wreck
of his native strength, attracted my attention.
I endeavored to attract his. He turned a pair
of bleared, sightless eyes in my direction; but
there was no sign of recognition. I leaned
from the car-window, and called softly, “Baby!”
But he did not heed. I closed the window.
The car was just moving on, when he suddenly
turned, and, either by accident or design, thrust
a callous paw through the glass.

“It's worth a dollar and half to put in a new
pane,” said the conductor, “if folks will play
with bears!” —