In the police-court.
Sentenced.
and appears in the dock at police-courts. He associates with low companions—unclean-looking foreigners—who bang him sorely about the ribs with sticks to make him dance. They keep him badly, and he grows bony and mangy. He retaliates upon frightening them by getting loose, people, and breaking things. Then, when he is brought before a magistrate, they have to pay his fine. Sometimes they get into prison over him. The end is always the same—a bear who begins by associating with these people always turns up at the police court before long, and once there, he comes again and again just in the manner of the old offenders at Marlborough-street. Even in the innocent old times, when Bidpai wrote (or plagiarised) his fables, association with man made a fool of a bear. Witness the fable of the gardener's bear, who, zealous about a fly on his master's face, brought a paw upon it with all his force, and knocked off an indispensable piece of the worthy gardener's head. There is nothing whatever recorded against that gardener's character; he probably lived a most exemplary life, and won prizes at all the prehistoric horticultural. shows in India—although it might not be strictly correct for an American to say there were no flies on him. But his society made a great ass of that bear.
There was once a belief that bears licked their cubs into shape. If there be anything in this, all the bears in my acquaintance came of very negligent mothers—or, perhaps, of mothers who tried the other sort of licking. They have strength, sagacity, stupidity, gloom, cheerfulness, teeth, hair, claws, position, magnitude, and big feet; but nothing at all like shape. This is why they are able to indulge in such a rich variety of atti
