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AN EXCITING WOLF-HUNT,
Youth's Companion.
I well remember the moruiug we start
ed after that wolf. It was an old she
wolf, and she had been doiftg mischief
for more than a year. It was about the
20th of April.
She had been about the farms the fall
before. As many as a dozen sheep and
one calf had been found throttled. Deer
had several times come out of the woods
and joined the cattle in the pastures—
through fright, it seemed, at having been
pursued.
During the winter, a large gray wolf
had been seen three or four times near
the logging camps, ten miles above. One
night a man had shot at it from his
camp door as it was snatching at some
meat scraps that had been thrown out.
As soon as the snow was off, and the
sheep and cattle had been turned ont
again, the wolf renewed its depredations.
The second night when our sheep were
out, three were killed and partly eaten ;
and only two nights after this, a neigh
boring farmer lost four. That same af
ternoon, too, one of Mr. Murch’s —an-
other neighbor’s —cows came to the barn
worried aud bloody, as if she had been
attacked by some wild animal.
“ It is that wolf!” everybody said, and
the following morning, six of us turned
out to hunt it down.
Besides my cousin George and me,
there were Wilts Murch, Ned Wilbur,
and a young fellow named Walt Evans.
Evans waS a cousin of the Murch boys,
and was up from Portland to visit them
that spring. Alf Churchill, a boy who
worked fur us, was another one of the
party.
Grandfather was too old for such a
chase ; Mr. Wilbur was sick ; and Walt’s
father was not living. The business of
the farm fell largely to us boys, and we
thought it belonged to us to rid the com
munity of that wolf.
I remember carrying a dQuble-barrd
ed duck-gun, both barrels loaded with
B. B. shot and a bullet. George had
an old Sharpe’s carbine. Walt Evans
carried besides his gun, a policeman’s
“ billy ” and a knife in a belt. Ned and
Wilts both had guns, but Alf Churchill
had nothing bui an axe.
We were a warlike party, so far as
weapons weut, and we were determined
to hunt the wolf down.
George and I then owned two hounds.
Oneof them, “Old Jim," wasa big sav
age fellow. We took him with us. Wilts
took along his fox hound, too, and Mr.
Wilbur’s big watch-dog, “ Beave," came
on after us.
We went first to the pasture where
Mr. Wilbur's sheep had been killed.
The spot was a little hollow beside a
thicket of cedars and alders.
The sheep had been lying there to be
out of the cold, biting wind, probably.
In the dark, the wolf had throttled one
after another of them ; for sheep, when
attacked at night, w ill rarely run far,
but huddle together.
One of the sheep had been dragged
into the thicket and partially eaten.
Old Jim snuffed eagerly about it; add
then, with a loud, fierce challenge, lie
bounded off on the wolfs track. The
other hound and Beave followed.
You may be sure that six more thor
oughly excited boys never set off after
hounds. We ran through the brush af
ter them, down into a swamp, crossed a
muddy brook, and entered the old
growth woods beyond. And it was not
until Ned’s gun went off from accident
ally hitting the hammer against a stub,
and came near shooting Alf in the legs,
that we settled down to a more cautious
and steady pace.
The hounds, of course, soon left us be
hind. But we followed on, guided by
their loud baying.
The old wolfs lair was nearer than we
had supposed it to be. We had not
gone much more than a mile through
the thick forest, when we heard Old Jim
give a prolonged growl. The steady
baying had ceased.
“They’verun the old brute into some
ledge!” cried Wilts.
We hurried on, and came to a deep,
wooded gully between two high hills,
down the bed of which ran a brook,
foaming over mossy, shaded rocks. The
tracks led up this gully.
George was ahead, and we all follow
ed as fast as we could run. The hollow
grew narrower, with steeper sides; and
fifty rods farther up, we came to what
looked to be a huge jam of old stumps,
logs and brush, that filled the whole gul
ly to the height of fifteen or twenty feet.
Some heavy freshet had lodged it there.
The brook roared and gurgled beneath
it.
The hounds stood at the foot of this
jam of stumps apd brush near a hole
between two mossy log'. They whined
VOL, III —NO. 22.
when wc came up, and Old Jiiagave an
other long growl. We looked about the
place. There were mafcy holcss, old
ones and fresh ofies, and bits of tur aud
wool scattered around.
“ Here’s her den !” exclaimed Ned.
It was a dark, vicious-looking hole
under the old logs. Alf and George
climbed over to the other side to see if
there were more holes leading under or
out.
Salnd and earth had been washed in
from above. The lower hole was the
wolf’s ouly “door,” so far as we could
see.
The dogs would go into it a few feet
and bark, but they did not seem over
anxious to cotne to close quarters with
its occupant. Old Beavc charged in
once, and was greeted with a savage
snarl. For a moment, we thought there
would be a fight. But the dog bucked
out, and we didn’t blame him.
We had little doubt but whajt the old
wolf had whelps in there. George said
that we had better get our axes, and by
cutting and dragging away the old stuff,
w uk into the den.
But Wilts said, “ No, boys; I believe
the jam will burn, if once we can get
fire into it and well agoing, and we can
roast the old thief out.”
Alf then got some chips and splints,
which he tucked into the further end of
the jam, where it was dryest, and set
them on fire with matches that he had
brought along. The fire was sometime
in starting, but after a while the old
stuff got well wanned up, and then it
began to take flame nnd roar.
“ Capital! We’ll soon have oiirgame,
and roasted, too,” shouted Wilts.
And it seemed —as the flames roared
and began to wrap the whole great pile
of drift—that we had got the old “ tor
ment ” into limbo at last, and stood a
ehanceof not only burning her “house”
over her head, but of burning her up
with it.
We could hear her growling at the
fire. But she was tough and wily, and
not disposed to give in w ithout a savage
fight for life.
Just as the fire seemed to enwrap the
wholejam, the wolf made a swift bolt
out through the blaze, and all singed
and sparkling with fire, flew at Old Jim
like a mad hyena.
Although we were on the lookout, we
were not quite prepared for so sudden a
spring as the old beast had made.
“ Look out I” shrieked Alf. “ Shoot!
shoot!”
George fired —Wilts fired—Alf slung
the axe, and Ned and I were both cock
ing our guns —trying to get aim.
But the savage brute flew from Jim
across the brook toward Alf. He ran
up the side of the gully, shouting:
“Shoot! Shoot her!”
No wonder he ran, for she was the ug
liest-looking ereaturel ever saw.
She got past us all, and scoured away
down the hollow-. The dogs started af
ter her, at full cry, down the gully, and
off through the woods at the northeast.
We rallied, too, loaded up again, and
followed for a mile or more, Then we
lost them from hearing altogether; and
being now pretty tired and hungry, we
went home.
But just as George and Alf, and I
were finishing a most hearty meal, Ned
came running to the house to say that
the hounds had come around from the
northwest, within hearing again. We
went into the yard. They seemed not
to be more than two miles off, going in
full cry towards the “ pond woods.”
“ Come on!” shouted George.
Guns were brought out in hot haste,
and we went. But after running a mile
or two, we lost sound of the dogs; and
it was not till four o’clock that they
came around from the south end of the
pond. Not many minutes after that we
heard the long howl of Old Jim. It
was down by the east shore of the
pond, where a crag, called the “ over
set,” fronted on the water.
Wilts and George had already started
to go down there. The rest of us fol
lowed them around the head of the
pond and down through the woods to
the “ overset.” George and Wilts were
at some distance ahead.
The dogs were whining about the
rock. There was a great crevice, two
or three inches wide, between two huge
rocks which lay at the foot of the cliff.
these, other great Imulders had
fallen down. The crevices looked like
the mouth of a den.
“ The old brute is in there, sure
enough!” Wilts said. “How I wish I
had a bucket of nitroglycerine to tuck
in after her 1”
Finally, we concluded to set our guns
—the whole of them—spring gun fash
ion, pointing into the crevice.
Ned went up to a house, about half
a mile off, aud got some hemp twine.
While he was gone the rest of us cut
crotched stakes to rest the guns in, and
set them in the ground around the
hole. Five guns were set pointing
into the den.
When Ned came back with the twine,
a perfect network of lines was laid
across the mouth of the den ; and each
of these cross lines ran around a stake
to the triggers of all the guns.
It was a nice job to fix them, aud a
rather critical one when it came to put
ting the lines on the triggers. The
guns were then cocked. Each one had
been loaded as heavily as wo dared to
load it.
By the time we got our guns set, it
was fairly dark, and we went off' home
as fast as we could.
Early next morning, before either
George or I w-as up, a boy from the
house where we got the twine came in.
The family had heard the guns go off
late in the night. As soon as it was
light, the boy had run down and looked
over the top of the crag, and had seen
the old wolf dowii on the pebbles, “ kick
ing,” he said.
We were soon out of bed and down
by the crag. And sure enough, the old
pest, that had done so much mischief,
lay stretched out there, not “ kicking,”
but stone dead.
She had gone fifty feet or more from
the mouth of the den, though both her
forelegs were broken by the buckshot,
and a bullet had traversed the whole
length of her body. Three of the guns
had been discharged when she tripped
the lines.
The Largest Tree in the World.
11l Sail Francisco, Cal., encircled by
a circus tent of ample dimensions, is a
section of the largest, tree in the world
exceeding the diameter of the famous
tree of Calaveras by five feet. This
monster ot the vegetable kingdom was
discovered in 1874, on Tule River, Tu
lare county, about seventy-five miles
from Visalia. At some remote period,
its top had been broken off by the ele
ments or some unknown forces, yet
when it was discovered it had an eleva
tion of two hundred and forty feet.
The trunk of the tiee was one hundred
and eleven feet in circumference and,
with a diameter of thirty-five feet four
inches.
The section on exhibition is hollowed
out, leaving about a foot of bark
and several inches of the wood. The
interior is one hundred feet in circum
ference and thirty feet in diameter, and
it has a seating capacity of about two
hundred. It was cut off from the tree
about twelve feet above the base and
required the labor of four men for nine
days to chop it down. In the center of
the tree and extending through its
whole length, was a rotten core about
two feet in diameter, partially filled
with a soggy, decayed vegetation that
had fallen into it from the top.
In the center of this cavity was found
the trunk of a little tree of the same
species, having perfect bark on it, and
showing regular growth. It was of
uniform diameter an inch and a half all
the way, and when the tree fell and
split open, this curious stem was traced
for nearly one hundred feet, usually
straight, but occasionally gnarled and
twisted as though it had met impedi
ments in its growth. It is believed to
have sprung from a seed in the bottom,
grown the whole length of the trunk,
and supported a green, living top at the
summit. The rings in this monarch of
the forest show its age to have been
4,840 years.
Atlanta Constitution: The Buffalo
Express says The Constitution called
Grant a fraud. Did we ? Really we
had forgotten all about it. There are
so many frauds in the republican party
that wo find it impossible to keq> a
list.
HARTWELL, GA., WEDNESDAY. JANUARY 29, 1879.
Sherry Ptaek.
jAwiiriUt Couritr-Joumal.
Judge Black, of Pennsylvania, tells
a comical story of a trial in which a
German doctor appeared for the defense
in the case lor damages brought against
a client by' the object of his assault.
The eminent jurist soon rccoguized in
his witness, who was produced as a
medical expert, a laboring man who
some years before and in another part
of the country had been engaged by
him as a bulkier of post and rail fences.
With this cue he opened his cross ex
amination. “ You say, Doctor,” he
began with great deference and suavi
ty, “ that you operated upon Mr. —'s
head after it was cut by Mr.— ?”
"Oh, yaw,” replied the ex-fence
builder; “me do dat; yaw, yaw.”
“ Was the wound a very severe one,
Doctor ?”
“ Enough to kill him if I not save his
life.”
“ Well, Doctor, what did you do for
him ?”
“ Everything.”
“ Did you perform tl>e Cmsariau op
eration ?”
“ Oh, yaw, yaw ; if me not do dot he
dis."
“ Did j-ou decapitate Idm ?”
“ Yaw, yaw ; me do dot too.”
“ Did j-ou hold a post-morteui exam
ination ?”
“ Oil, to be scliure, Schudge ; me al
ways do dot.”
“ Well, now, Doctor,” and here the
Judge bent over in a friendly, familiar
way, “ tell us whether yon submitted
your patient to the process known
among medical men as post-anti-rail
fennorum."
The mock doctor drew himself up in
dignantly. “ Sherry Plaek,” says he,
“ I always know’d you vas a tam jay
hawk lawyer, an’ now I know you for a
tam mean man.”
Pat on the Road.
An Irishman, driven to desperation
by the stringency of the money market
and the high price of provisions, pro
cured a pistol and took to the road.
Meeting a traveler, he stopped him
with i
“ Your money or your life!”
Seeing Pat was green at the business,
the traveler said i
“ I’ll tell you what I'll do; I’ll give
yon all my money for that pistol.”
Pat received the money and handed
over the pistol.
“ Now,” said the traveler, “ hand
back that money or I’ll blow your
brains out!”
“ Blaze away, my hearty,” said Pat,
“ never a dhrop of powder is there in
it!”
Atlanta Constitution: An eternal
warfare seems to rage between the
country negro and the town darkey.
This was illustrated at the passenger
depot yesterday. A colored youth from
Pike county approached a town negro,
and the following conversation ensued :
" Whar bouts is de ticket office ?”
“ Right dar ’fo’ yo’ eyes.”
“ Fo’ whose eyes !”
“Yonc.”
“Is you de ticket office ?"
“ Look ycr, nigger, don’t you gimme
none yo’ slack.”
“I’m a mighty slack man, n.on.w’en
I gits stirred up.”
“ An’ you’ll git stirred up ef you
stan’ roun’ yer foolin’ longer me.”
“ I)at’s de kinder ex’cise w’at I’m a
pinin’ fer.”
■ And with that they clinched and had
a right lively tussle. They were sepa
rated, however, before a policeman came
along, and the Pike county darkey
found the ticket office. The town ne
gro, it may be well to mention was
badly used up.
A Jones county man, who attended
the Macon fair and saw a man handle
a swarm of bees, went home and ex
perimented with one of his own coveys.
He tilted the box np and pulled out a
handful, and held them up so his wife,
who was standing at a safe distance,
could see them. Then he tried to put
them Back, but this was a failure.
Then he endeavored to shake them off,
and this also appeared to be a failure,
for his wife beard him give a snort, and
tiic next moment he was tearing
WHOLE NO. 120.
through an orchard of young peach
trees, making as much fuss as a fright
ened cavalry company. The place
where lie went through the fence looked
ns though the band-wagon of a circus
had been shot through it sideways, lie
was getting along comfortably at last
accounts.
Religious Experience In Nevada.
Ktno (Xev.) Oautlt.
“ I’m going to church to-morrow,” re
marked a well-known citizen of Reno,
with a red face in Sander’s saloon this
afternoon.
“ Why,’! demanded an astonished fel
low old-timer.
“ Well, you see," explained the gen
tleman, “ I went last Sunday for the
first time in nine years, an' I felt ever
so much better than if I’d put in the
day at pedro or poker as usual. Some
how, seein’ so many well-dressed, de
cent people in a crowd, an' bearin’ ttie
parson aud list'nin’ to the hymns 1 used
toknowwhenl was a boy, made me
feel sort o’ tender-hearted like. An’ the
feeling didn't we.ar away neither. I've
felt so d—d good and pious-like all the
w’cck that I could lick my weight in
hoodlums this here minute. Goin’ to
church is the boss rocket, you kin bet
on that. Every leadin’ citizen had
ought to go to church. Martin, tnkc
sumfln' yourself.”
Ex-Governor Vance lias been elected
to Congress from North Carolina.
Those who have seen Mrs. Grant in
Europe, say she is homesick and wants
to get back to God s country.
Oglethorpe Echo : We believe Gov.
Colquitt is a Christian gentleman uud a
jicrfectly honest, correct man, but he’s
no more fit to be Governor of Georgia
“ than a frog ain’t got no tail."
A recent colored emigrant from South
Carolina to Liberia writes back to his
brother to “ come out —coons are plenty
here.” Let this information go through
out the land ; let every darkey hear the
glad tidings!
Richmond Dispatch: The mayor of
a Georgia town, so new that it had no
lock-up, had two prisoners put under a
wagon-bed turned upside down on the
ground, and a cotton-bale placed on it
to hold it down.
A short article on dlptheria in the
Mankato Review gives pure lemon juice
as a cure for the disease. It is gargled
every half hour, one, two, three hours,
as recovery progresses, the patient
swallowing a little each time, so as to
reach the affected parts.
It is settled that the screech of the
locomotive is to resound in the streets
of Jerusalem. A contract has been
signed for the building of a narrow
gauge road on the American principle
from Joppa to Jerusalem. The dis
tance is forty miles, and when the road
is completed the trip will be as easy
and comfortable as steam on land and
water can make it.
“ Billy, bow did you lose your fin
ger ?”
“ Easy enough,” said Billy.
“ I suppose j-ou did, but how ?”
“ I guess you’d lost yourn if it had
been where mine was.”
“ That doesn’t answer my question,”
“ Well, if you must know I had to
cut it off or steal the trap.”
A young man recently saw the fol
lowing advertisement in a newspaper:
“ Ilow to Get I ich. A rare secret.
Mend twenty-five cents to Geo. Fuller
ton, box 413, Portland, Me."
Being desirous of “ making a rise,”
he forwarded the money and received
the following reply:
“ Work like the devil, and never
spend a cent.”
By Their Fruits.
Methodist Recorder.
To measure a Christian, we must
puncture his creed and toss it as gossa
mer aside ; to test a man we must rc
connoiter beyond the lines of his pro
fession, and get over into the domain
where he lives. We must get beyond
pew, beyond parlor, beyond the family
aitar, and linger a little in the realm
where he makes bargains, where he plans
and where lie touches the world. There
must be a righteous citizenship as the
of an evangelic ft! prefer
sion.
HILL ARP’S SUNDAY ( HAT.
Pr<Xln••! bjr Ciwutf
Kara I.lna.
Atlanta Ounttihition.
We still live. For the past week we
have had to move round lively and dance
to the tune of “ wood up quickstep.” We
run three fires, and it has taken back
logs aud front-logs, aud top-logs and
chips and chunks, and pine-knots, to
keep the bairn comfortable. A good big
load a day about doe* it, and I was think
ing how thankful wc ought to be that we
had the wood handy. J suppose a load
of old cross-ties would keep an average
family of poor folks from freezin for a
day or two, but its uo time now to be put
upon them sort of rations—especially in
a house with cracks big enough to fling
a cat through. May tliegco:! Lord have
' mercy on ’em. What would you poor
I folks have done if the Georgia ruilroad
hadn’t thought about the cross-tieaf
When the treasury is empty, and the
weather so cold, your good people can’t
get out to buy or beg a little fuel for the
poor, it's a blessed thing to have old
cross-ties so convenient. While readin
your account of their desolation and dis
tress I couldn’t help ruminatin over the
liberality of your people to Memphis
oud New Orleans, ami Vicksburg, aud
how l lmd known folks to strain their
guns shooting at long range and overlook
the game close to ’em. I've knowed
good people to send clothes to the heath
en at Bramapoota when there was plenty
of children goin about barefooted and
ragged and cold in the suburbs of their
own town. School girls, aud their moth
ers too, weep tears of sympathy over a
thrilling novel which seems to prove that
what we read of makes more impression
on us than what we see. Just so with a
touching picture on canvass or a tender
scene well acted in the play, and Tom
Hood's song of the shirt is said to have
awakened more charity in London than
the press and the pulpit, and all the bo
ncvolcnt societies put together. Well,
of course them poor folks who are lazy
and trilling ought to suffer a little, and
I reckon that’s excuse sufficient for moot
everybody who wants one, but one thing
is certain, helpless women and children
ain’t goin to freeze to death in the nama
of the Lord in this country. Somebody
else will be held responsible for it, 6hor.
A good Jog fire is about the best thing
to keep a man comfortnblc these icy days
that I know of, though Dr. Kane, who
roosted a while in sight of the north pole,
says it ain’t—that fat meat and grease
aud blubber are better, and he had to
stuff down ten pounds of it everyday to
keep his blood clrculatin. There’s a
heap of comfort in peroosiu his book
these wintry nights, and reading about
zero being a very pleasant state of at
mosphere—a sort of Indian summer
compared with the general temperature.
My friend Dwinell says a man can stand
any amount of cold if lie’ll fix himself
up for it and brace his resolution up agin
it. It’s intercstiu to hear him tell about
■ liviu away up in Maine some forty or
: fifty years ago (I forgot which he said)
when lie was a boy, and how the house
used to crack, crack, crack all night,
and shrink up, and one liextraordinary
spell it shrunk off the pillars, and the
rooms got so small the furniture was all
jammed up together—and how they sat
up and eat all night, and went to prayer
as the sun rose, which was all that saved
’em, and how a man’s breath froze into
icicles and stuck out sharp and straight
a foot or two, and sometimes folks got
hurt running into one another in the
dark, and how one terrible night, when
the mercury went out of sight and
wouldn’t register, a house got on fire and
nobody dared to go to it, and nextmoru
in the house was goDe but the flumes
were there stickin up fifty feet high and
frozen into red ice—and how' they couldnt
keep mules in Maine, for their ears froze
off' so you couldn’t tell ’em from horses,
and when they brayed at 40 decrees be
low zero the bray turned into ice, shot
and broke w indow-glass worse than hail
stones —and how, in the fall of the year,
whisky was poured into shallow pans to
freeze, and then cut up and retailed all
winter by the square inch, as chewing
gum—and how, one bitter day a likely
lad got frozen through and through as
he was going to school, and it took the
doctor three days to thaw him, and they
got him thawed all but his heart, and
they couldn’t reach that, and it’s frozen
yet, and he couldn’t refrain from calling
his name, w hich is that same Jim Blame,
from the cold state of Maine* who is said
to contain nary blood in his vein, and
this serves to explain why he gets so in
sane at a little blood-stain on a rebel
shirt.
Well, I dont blame Melville for de
parting from those euclement coasts, and
seeking a clime more congenial to his
feelings. If he left any more of his sort
behind him, they too will find a cordial
welcome in the sunny south, for hes
made a good citizen in peace and a
good soldier in war, and it there s any
thing higher I don’t know it. May ho
and his family—when begets one—iivo
lone and prosper. Yours,
Bill Aff