One fine morning, in the middle of the forest, Baby Bear woke up with a loud yawn and stretch. The sun was shining and a little breeze was blowing. He listened to the birds chirping and the little brook gurgling as it went tumbling over the stones. But mostly, Baby Bear thought he could hear the whisper of the leaves overhead, and the soft swish of the graceful grass-blades as they danced together.
“Oh, I feel so fine this morning! I just can’t tell you how fine I feel!” cried Baby Bear, and all the time he was jumping about, and shaking one paw after the other in glee.
“What’s up? What are you going to do?” growled Grizzly, as he woke up, too, and poked his big black nose out of the home tree. “Going to fish?”
Now Grizzly was Baby Bear’s father, and Mama Bear and Baby Bear shared the home tree with him. But today he just felt too good to mind being wakened up. So he lay quietly and listened.
“I feel so good I’m going for a walk,” said Baby Bear, doing a little dance on his hind feet to show how happy he was. “Oh, such a day! Such a day!”
“Better come to breakfast first,” rumbled Grizzly.
“I’ll be back in a jiffy. I just want to shake paws with the little brook,” said Baby Bear, as he ran to the very end of the big hollow tree. And he poked his little black nose out a crack and looked for his mother.
“Where are you going, my son?” cried Mama Bear. “What is it you see?”
“I think I’m going to feel as good as I do right now always,” said Baby Bear. “This morning I feel as if I want to walk, and walk, and meditate, and think how good it is living!”
“Well, just be careful,” cautioned Mama Bear, sticking her head a little way out and looking round the tree very anxiously. “Don’t go far away, don’t!”
Baby Bear looked at her as if to say, “Don’t you worry. I’ll be back soon,” and he said, even more briskly than before, “Oh, I just can’t stay in bed any longer! I feel I must go out and take a little walk!”
So, without saying another word, he slipped out of the hole in the tree, and without any coat or hat or shoes either, it would be well to say.
The sunshine was like a great warm blanket that wrapped itself about Baby Bear. Honey there was in his whole day’s outlook, and he felt as if he could just wander along forever in the warm sunshine, and with the sweet fresh air blowing his fur about.
All at once it came into his head that maybe he might see Old Sir Bruin off on his travels. You know all bears used to be black, but when Little Bruin began to wander away he longed to be unique, for a bear that always looked like another would be feared by nobody. So when he began to have his own way, and travel about as he wanted, he got to looking different from the rest, and had all sorts of funny adventures, that made him look even more different.
In fact, when he got tired of putting on natural clothes all day and night, he thought of all the colors he had seen, and painted himself, and kept the paint on during rainy days when nobody was around.
Just for a whim, Baby Bear thought he would try and find Old Little Bruin.
But he couldn’t go to sleep if he wanted to, and no one wanted to do that while he felt as he did today. So with a last shake and yawp he started off through the bracken and the underbrush, and along the boughs of the great trees, looking and listening, all of a tremble for the new sights and sounds that would break upon his keen gaze.
He had not gone far when he heard someone crying. Now, Baby Bear’s kind heart was concerned in a minute. He knew very well that whoever it was ought not to cry, and when he first noticed the bright red eyes of a little chipmunk, all of a quiver with fright and sorrow, stopped short, and asked tenderly, “Why, dear little creature, why do you cry? What would you like me to do to comfort you?”
“Oh, don’t speak to me! Don’t speak to me!” gasped the poor chipmunk.
“Why not?”
“Monkey shines!” That was all the answer the chipmunk made. And Baby Bear decided not to dress himself in wanting clothes after all. With the same breath he said, on seeing a big dark cloud lumbering over his nose, “Ain’t dat de funnyes colored coon you’ve eber seen, anyhow?”
With that he turned round “Down Home,” as they say, and ran back very happy, and as he got in he looked into Mama Bear’s eyes, and said, “Darling Mama, it was well to come!”
“Well, well, I hope it’s only that you missed your breakfast,” she said, as she took his paw and all sat round for a good long story-telling and a good long happy talk.
But she didn’t have to ask him where he had been or what he had done after he got so bright-eyed.
When Grizzly came out he said to him, “You’ll have to look out for him. I don’t think he’ll ever be as good as we.”
But Mama Bear said Baby Bear might be good even if he was a little different from them, all of which softened all their hearts.
While old Grizzly just snorted angrily and handicapped off through the underbrush, she rocked the charming little creature “to and fro,” and said, “Dear babe of my bosom, take care of thy little black nose, and don’t go peeping and prying after everything! And I’ll tell you who lost their life-end and limb and pushed his dear body out of fit on one trying occasion. You’ll find it written out something like this, `The research of knowledge generally brings virtue with it.’”
So be it, dear reader!