tried to build a fire. The first match would prove to be wet. The
second match, when struck, would shine and smell, and fizz a little,
and then go out. There would be only one match left. Death would
ensue if it failed. I should get close to the log, crawl under my
hat, strike the match, see it catch, flicker, almost go out (the
reader painfully excited by this time), blaze up, nearly expire, and
finally fire the punk,--thank God! And I said to myself, "The public
don't want any more of this thing: it is played out. Either have a
box of matches, or let the first one catch fire."

In this gloomy mood I plunged along. The prospect was cheerless;
for, apart from the comfort that a fire would give, it is necessary,
at night, to keep off the wild beasts. I fancied I could hear the
tread of the stealthy brutes following their prey. But there was one
source of profound satisfaction,--the catamount had been killed. Mr.
Colvin, the triangulating surveyor of the Adirondacks, killed him in
his last official report to the State. Whether he despatched him
with a theodolite or a barometer does not matter: he is officially
dead, and none of the travelers can kill him any more. Yet he has
served them a good turn.

I knew that catamount well. One night when we lay in the bogs of the
South Beaver Meadow, under a canopy of mosquitoes, the serene
midnight was parted by a wild and humanlike cry from a neighboring
mountain. "That's a cat," said the guide. I felt in a moment that
it was the voice of "modern cultchah." " Modern culture," says Mr.
Joseph Cook in a most impressive period,--" modern culture is a child
crying in the wilderness, and with no voice but a cry." That
describes the catamount exactly. The next day, when we ascended the
mountain, we came upon the traces of this brute,--a spot where he had