respect.

Like most outlawed men, he has been
supplied with a reputation much worse than he
deserves as an excuse for his persecution and
a justification to his murderers. His
character has been traduced in tales of the fireside
and his disposition has been maligned ever
since the female of his species came out of
the woods to rebuke irreverence to
smooth-pated age. Every man's hand has been against
him, but seldom has his paw been raised
against man except in self-defense.

A vegetarian by choice and usually by
necessity, Bruin is accused of anthropophagy, and
every child is taught that the depths of the
woodland are infested by ravening bears with
a morbid taste for tender youth. Poor,
harried, timid Ursus, nosing among the fallen
leaves for acorns and beechnuts, and ready to
flee like a startled hare at the sound of a
foot-fall, is represented in story and picture as
raging through the forest with slavering jaws
seeking whom he may devour. Yet the man
does not live who can say truthfully that he
ever was eaten by a bear.

Possibly there have been bears of abnormal
or vitiated tastes who have indulged in human