soles of their five-toed feet, that look like bare-footed men's tracks. The Indians were sometimes fooled by these tracks of Brother Bear. To the people of Northern Europe, who wondered over these human-looking foot-prints, the brown bear was called "the wise old man in the fur cloak."
Brown bear cubs always were easily tamed. In Northern Japan a people called Ainos fatten bear cubs for food. When small they play with the children, and are not shut up until they become big and rough. They are as playful as puppies. Hundreds of years ago' trained bears were led by chains about the old walled cities of Europe, and made to dance and tumble and pull carts. Very likely bears, and many other wild animals, were tamer in the days when there were fewer people and bigger forests. In Yellowstone Park, in the Rocky Mountains, where hunters are not allowed to shoot or trap them, black and cinnamon bears come right up to the hotels in the woods to eat scraps from the table.
Mr. Thompson Seton tells all about these bears, and their bright and comical ways, in his story of "Johnny Bear." Johnny was a cub that worried his mama. He was an only child, and very much spoiled and peevish. He would poke his silly head into every sort of danger. He was so greedy he often had the stomachache, and he got his paws fast in tomato cans and jam pots. So, once she had to box his ears!
We can't all go to Yellowstone Park and take snap-shot pictures of bears from the hotel verandas, but nearly all of us can see them in menageries and city park zoos. There you can see black and brown, cinnamon, "grizzly" and polar bears. They all belong to one family, as you can easily see from their clumsy bodies, shuffling walk, shaggy coats and bear-y faces. But, in many ways, they are as different from each other as white, black, brown and yellow people.
The old world brown bear is the tamest of all. He will sit upon his haunches, cross his paws over his breast and catch peanuts in his mouth. Sometimes, when the band plays, he will dance and gambol about like a big, playful dog. The smaller, fine-coated black bear is friendly sometimes; but often he climbs the oak tree in his pit, folds his limp body across a big limb, like your mama's rug muff, and sulks or sleeps. You couldn't coax him down with a pot of honey! The big "grizzly" bear has an ugly temper. He sits back and snarls. Mr. Roosevelt says his real name is "Grisly," or horrid, and you believe it. He is a huge, ugly beast with long teeth and
