"Oh! do, Mr. Bear," cried Gretchen; and no sooner had she uttered the words than all the children cried out at the same time, "Oh, please do, sir!"
The Bear took several long whiffs at his pipe, and thus continued,—
"My Mother took me to a retired part of the forest (of Towskipowski, Poland) where few animals ever came; and telling me that I must now stand alone, extended both paws, and slowly lowered me towards the earth. The height as I looked down, seemed terrible, and I felt my legs kick in the air, with fear of I did not know what, till suddenly I felt four hard things and no motion. It was the fixed earth beneath my four infant legs. 'Now,' said my Mother, 'you are what is called standing alone!' But what she said I heard as in a dream. With my back in the air as though it rested on a wooden trussel, with my nose poking out straight snuffing the fresh breeze and the many secrets of the woods, my ears pricking and shooting with all sorts of new sounds to wonder at, to want to have, to love, or to tumble down at,—and my eyes staring before me full of light and confused gold and dancing things, I seemed to be in a condition over which I had no power to effect the least change, and in which I must remain fixed till some wonderful thing happened. But the firm voice of my Mother came to my assistance and I heard her tell me to look upon the earth beneath me and see where I was. First I looked up among the boughs, then side-ways at my shoulder, then I squinted at the tip of my nose—all by mistake and innocence—at last I bent my nose in despair and saw my forepaws standing, and this of course was right. The first thing that caught my attention, being the first thing I saw distinctly, was a little blue flower with a bright jewel in the middle, which I afterwards found was a drop of dew. Sometimes I thought this little blue darling was so close that it almost touched my eyes and certainly the color of it was up in my head; sometimes I thought it was deep down, a long way off. When I bent my face towards it to give it a kiss it seemed just where it was though I had not done what I had thought to do.
"The next thing I saw upon the ground was a soft-looking
