The Coon Lives - Well, No One Seems To Know
Particularly Where Brer Coon Lives, But When The Hunter's Moon Is
Large
and full he descends into the corn-lands, and men chase him with dogs
for his fur, which makes
The finest kind of overcoat, and his flesh,
which tastes like chicken. He cries at night sorrowfully as though a
child were lost.
They seem to kill, for one reason or other, everything that moves in
this land. Hawks, of course; eagles for their rarity; foxes for their
pelts; red-shouldered blackbirds and Baltimore orioles because they are
pretty, and the other small things for sport - French fashion. You can
get a rifle of a kind for twelve shillings, and if your neighbour be
fool enough to post notices forbidding 'hunting' and fishing, you
naturally seek his woods. So the country is very silent and unalive.
There are, however, bears within a few miles, as you will see from this
notice, picked up at the local tobacconist's:
JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN! BEAR HUNT!
As bears are too numerous in the town of Peltyville Corners, Vt., the
hunters of the surrounding towns are invited to participate in a grand
hunt to be held on Blue Mountains in the town of Peltyville Corners,
Vt., Wednesday, Nov. 8th, if pleasant. If not, first fine day. Come one,
come all!
They went, but it was the bear that would not participate. The notice
was printed at somebody's Electric Print Establishment. Queer mixture,
isn't it?
The bear does not run large as a rule, but he has a weakness for swine
and calves which brings punishment. Twelve hours' rail and a little
marching take you up to the moose-country; and twenty-odd miles from
here as the crow flies you come to virgin timber, where trappers live,
and where there is a Lost Pond that many have found once but can never
find again.
Men, who are of one blood with sheep, have followed their friends and
the railway along the river valleys where the towns are. Across the
hills the inhabitants are few, and, outside their State, little known.
They withdraw from society in November if they live on the uplands,
coming down in May as the snow gives leave. Not much more than a
generation ago these farms made their own clothes, soap, and candles,
and killed their own meat thrice a year, beef, veal, and pig, and sat
still between-times. Now they buy shop-made clothes, patent soaps, and
kerosene; and it is among their tents that the huge red and gilt
Biographies of Presidents, and the twenty-pound family Bibles, with
illuminated marriage-registers, mourning-cards, baptismal certificates,
and hundreds of genuine steel-engravings, sell best. Here, too, off the
main-travelled roads, the wandering quack - Patent Electric Pills, nerve
cures, etc. - divides the field with the seed and fruit man and the
seller of cattle-boluses. They dose themselves a good deal, I fancy,
for it is a poor family that does not know all about nervous
prostration.
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