The Youths Companion | Page 8

ashes in the
arch.
When boiled away, the lye leaves a residuum, which, in color and
general appearance, resembles brown sugar. This was the "salts." It is
very strong. Compared with lye, it is like the oil of peppermint
compared with peppermint tea.
We had been promised six cents a pound for salts delivered at Bangor,
to be refined into soda. When we met with no interruptions, we
obtained from forty to fifty pounds of salts in a day. Not a very rapid
way of getting rich, yet better than nothing for boys who were
determined to earn something so that we could prepare for college.
But it was shocking work for the hands, handling the lye and these
"salts." Round our finger nails the skin was eaten off, and the nails
themselves were warped and yellowed. Often the blood followed a
single accidental slop of the "juice" which settled at the bottom of the
"salts." I once heard a man who used to make salts say that he spoiled a
horse by carrying a bagful of the nearly dry extract thrown across the
saddle. Some of the juice trickled out, and going under the saddle, not
only took the hair off, but made terrible sores, which it was found
well-nigh impossible to heal. The liquid corroded our iron kettles very
rapidly.
All through November, December and January we worked
industriously, and studied our Latin. In summer the swamp would have
been unhealthy and dangerous to life; but in winter, with the mud and
water-holes frozen solidly, it was a warm, comfortable location, for it
lay in a great valley, inclosed by high mountain ridges, that were
covered by dense growths of pine and spruce. It fairly seemed as if the
great fires which we built every afternoon warmed up the whole
swamp.
Our smoke would often almost hide the sun when the weather was calm.
Very little wind at any time found its way into our sheltered valley. The

winter fortunately was a mild one. The snow was not more than a foot
deep, and rains occasionally fell, leaving an icy crust.
One of these rain storms came during the last days of January. It
thawed for two days, and then became cold on the following night.
Next morning, while we were getting breakfast, boiling potatoes and
baking biscuits in our tin baker, we heard out in the woods, to the east
of our camp, sounds as if some animal was walking on the snow and
breaking through the crust.
We listened. The sounds came nearer, and pretty soon we saw through
the tree trunks that they were made by a bear. Probably the warm rain
had roused him out of his winter den, or else he was starved out, for he
looked surly and fierce, as if he felt cross.
He walked leisurely until he was within seven or eight rods of us. Then
he stopped and looked at us a minute, but started forward again, and
would probably have gone on civilly, had not Ed took our gun, which
we kept loaded, and ran after him.
[Illustration (woods-1) Shooting the Bear]
Hearing Ed coming, the bear turned round and ran towards him.
Ed stopped and took aim. The bear at once rose on his hind legs, and
fanned the air with his paws.
Ed fired, and fortunately killed him with a single charge of buck-shot.
But I never saw a poorer bear. His hair was rusty, and he was evidently
not in good health. The meat we could not eat; the very crows would
have passed it by.
We wanted, however, candles to study by, and thought we could obtain
grease enough from poor bruin to serve this purpose.
So we cut the body up, hair and all,--for his hide absolutely stuck to his
bones,--and that night cleared out one of the kettles, and commenced

trying out our bear's grease.
The contents of the kettle sizzled there all the evening, giving off
anything but an agreeable odor. We were translating the fable of "The
Mouse and the Peasant" that night, and nihil Mehurcule is still mixed
up in my mind with the odor of that old bear.
By nine o'clock the oil was fried out. We throw the scraps into the fire,
and these made, if possible, a still more disagreeable odor as they
burned. The whole swamp was full of it.
The hot fat was then poured off into a tin pail, and hung in a little
spotted maple near one end of our camp-shed. We used to hang all our
tin dishes and ladles here, for the maple had low limbs, which we had
cut off so as to leave the stubs for pegs.
Underneath this tree was the great box--an old grain-box from a
logging-camp--in which