Withholding his name lest he be classed by President Roosevelt as a “nature fakir” along with C. D. G. Roberts and others, a Minnesota lumberjack relates a bear story which makes the Rev. Dr. William J. Long’s animal tales sound like axiomatic truth.
    In the wilds of Minnesota, a dozen miles front Grand Rapids, dwells a homesteader named Hans Larsen. While clearing the land for cultivation he has also been rearing a family of seven children. Among the number is a three-year-old boy, who is known as Kid.
    The kid left home March 10 and went into the winds. It was three or four hours before his mother missed him, and it was three hours later when the neighbors were informed and the search began. A logging contractor also was notified and he assembled his crew of fifty men. The remaining part of the story is best told by the anonymous lumberjack, who found the boy the following day at noon:
    “When the old man sent the hurry-up call for us to drop drivin’ and hike over to the Norsk’s, who lost his kid, we broke for the little farm mighty quick. We knew the woods were full of wolves, and if they didn't get the kid the night was due to be colder’n — and he'd freeze to death before the frost fell. We just stopped at the wannegan long enough to fill our lunch sacks with grub and get plenty of matches, and then we put right into the woods a-flyin’.
    “We, made torches of birch bark, besides havin’ all the lanterns there was on the drive, and the ole man spread the whole fifty of us out, and we fine tooth combed that country all night. But we couldn't find hide nor hair of the kid, and when mornin’ come I says to myself, ‘That kid's a goner sure,’ and about everybody else thought the same way ’cept the ole man, and he never would give in if he died.
    “After we had lunch we went at it again. Along about noon I found the kid sleepin’ in a hollow log. Would not have seen him if it had not been for his little cap that had fallen on the ground. He was in a bear den, I took him out of the log, and the first thing he said was that he was hungry. I gave him all the lunch I had left, and he devoured it.
    “I tried to get the story of his experience from him. After I raised the long yell and was waitin’ for the boys to come in he did make out to tell me that he played about in the woods until he got tired and then tried to go home, but couldn't get there. Then It got dark; then he caught on to a big black ‘doggie and two little doggies’ layin’ down, and he laid down with them and slept warm all night, and he was so tired when mornin’ came that he couldn’t keep up with the ‘doggies.’ They ran away and left him.
    “Then he tried to get home, but couldn’t make it and found the hollow log and crawled in, cryin’ for his mother. Jehosephat! If that kid didn’t sleep with that she bear and her cubs and never got a scratch! But how a she bear with cubs, the most dangerous creature that walks, ever allowed him to do it I can't get through my head.”

From— The Fairmont West Virginian. (Fairmont, W. Va.), 22 June 1907. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.