She turned again to the center of the lake.
The brave, pretty creature was quite exhausted now. In a moment
more, with a rush of water, the boat was on her, and the man at the
oars had leaned over and caught her by the tail.
"Knock her on the head with that paddle!" he shouted to the gentleman
in the stern.
The gentleman was a gentleman, with a kind, smooth-shaven face, and
might have been a minister of some sort of everlasting gospel. He
took the paddle in his hand. Just then the doe turned her head, and
looked at him with her great, appealing eyes.
"I can't do it! my soul, I can't do it!" and he dropped the paddle.
"Oh, let her go!"
"Let H. go!" was the only response of the guide as he slung the deer
round, whipped out his hunting-knife, and made a pass that severed
her jugular.
And the gentleman ate that night of the venison.
The buck returned about the middle of the afternoon. The fawn was
bleating piteously, hungry and lonesome. The buck was surprised. He
looked about in the forest. He took a circuit, and came back. His
doe was nowhere to be seen. He looked down at the fawn in a helpless
sort of way. The fawn appealed for his supper. The buck had nothing
whatever to give his child, - nothing but his sympathy. If he said
anything, this is what he said: "I'm the head of this family; but,
really, this is a novel case. I've nothing whatever for you. I
don't know what to do. I've the feelings of a father; but you can't
live on them. Let us travel."
The buck walked away: the little one toddled after him. They
disappeared in the forest.
V
A CHARACTER STUDY
There has been a lively inquiry after the primeval man. Wanted, a
man who would satisfy the conditions of the miocene environment, and
yet would be good enough for an ancestor. We are not particular
about our ancestors, if they are sufficiently remote; but we must
have something. Failing to apprehend the primeval man, science has
sought the primitive man where he exists as a survival in present
savage races. He is, at best, only a mushroom growth of the recent
period (came in, probably, with the general raft of mammalian fauna);
but he possesses yet some rudimentary traits that may be studied.
It is a good mental exercise to try to fix the mind on the primitive
man divested of all the attributes he has acquired in his struggles
with the other mammalian fauna. Fix the mind on an orange, the
ordinary occupation of the metaphysician: take from it (without
eating it) odor, color, weight, form, substance, and peel; then let
the mind still dwell on it as an orange. The experiment is perfectly
successful; only, at the end of it, you haven't any mind. Better
still, consider the telephone: take away from it the metallic disk,
and the magnetized iron, and the connecting wire, and then let the
mind run abroad on the telephone. The mind won't come back. I have
tried by this sort of process to get a conception of the primitive
man. I let the mind roam away back over the vast geologic spaces,
and sometimes fancy I see a dim image of him stalking across the
terrace epoch of the quaternary period.
But this is an unsatisfying pleasure. The best results are obtained
by studying the primitive man as he is left here and there in our
era, a witness of what has been; and I find him most to my mind in
the Adirondack system of what geologists call the Champlain epoch. I
suppose the primitive man is one who owes more to nature than to the
forces of civilization. What we seek in him are the primal and
original traits, unmixed with the sophistications of society, and
unimpaired by the refinements of an artificial culture. He would
retain the primitive instincts, which are cultivated out of the
ordinary, commonplace man. I should expect to find him, by reason of
an unrelinquished kinship, enjoying a special communion with nature,
- admitted to its mysteries, understanding its moods, and able to
predict its vagaries. He would be a kind of test to us of what we
have lost by our gregarious acquisitions. On the one hand, there
would be the sharpness of the senses, the keen instincts (which the
fox and the beaver still possess), the ability to find one's way in
the pathless forest, to follow a trail, to circumvent the wild
denizens of the woods; and, on the other hand, there would be the
philosophy of life which the primitive man, with little external aid,
would evolve from original observation and cogitation. It is our
good fortune to know such a man; but it is difficult to present him
to a scientific and caviling generation. He emigrated from somewhat
limited conditions in Vermont, at an early age, nearly half a century
ago, and sought freedom for his natural development backward in the
wilds of the Adirondacks. Sometimes it is a love of adventure and
freedom that sends men out of the more civilized conditions into the
less; sometimes it is a constitutional physical lassitude which leads
them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the sickle, and the
society of bears to town meetings and taxes. I think that Old
Mountain Phelps had merely the instincts of the primitive man, and
never any hostile civilizing intent as to the wilderness into which
he plunged. Why should he want to slash away the forest and plow up
the ancient mould, when it is infinitely pleasanter to roam about in
the leafy solitudes, or sit upon a mossy log and listen to the
chatter of birds and the stir of beasts?
