MRS.

WOODS'S TAME BEAR.
Mrs.Woods was much alone during this summer.

Her husband was away from home during the working days of the week, at the saw and shingle mill on the Columbia, and during the same days Gretchen was much at school.
The summer in the mountain valleys of Washington is a long serenity.

The deep-blue sky is an ocean of intense light, and the sunbeams glint amid the cool forest shadows, and seem to sprinkle the plains with gold-dust like golden snow.

Notwithstanding her hard practical speech, which was a habit, Mrs.Woods loved Nature, and, when her work was done, she often made little journeys alone into the mountain woods.
In one of these solitary excursions she met with a little black cub and captured it, and, gathering it up in her apron like a kitten, she ran with it toward her cabin, after looking behind to see if the mother bear was following her.