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"The life of a wild animal always has a tragic end," as Ernest Thompson Seton said. This is the story of Metitsi Wahb, born a playful cub, orphaned young by the murder of his mother, his brothers and sister, raising himself surrounded by enemies, and growing to the fiercest creature anywhere in his vast range -- though showing himself a gentleman in the Yellowstone National Park. And finally, he is laid low by a smaller, more cunning enemy, and defeated in the end by age and injury. "The lif ...

Ernest Thompson Seton's book, "Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallac." Published in 1919, it tells the story of a tiny Grizzly cub who grew to be the Monarch of the Plains -- and the Prisoner of humanity's arrogance. "Kind memory calls the picture up before me now, clear, living clear: I see them as they sat, the one small and slight, the other tall and brawny, leader and led, rough men of the hills. They told me this tale--in broken bits they gave it, a sentence at a time. ... They told of the ri ...

"Orthodoxy," a series of essays by Gilbert Keith Chesterton. First published in 1908. Read by David "Grizzly" Smith. "The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel." This is how Chesterton explains "Orthodoxy," the sequel to Heretics. "I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I wil ...

"Heretics," a series of essays by Gilbert Keith Chesterton. First published in 1905. Read by David "Grizzly" Smith. Chesterton had a sense of humor, had a sense of drama, and had sense. He was a man of strong opinions, and quite willing to argue vehemently for his own opinions, even with his friends -- and they remained his friends -- like George Bernard Shaw and Rudyard Kipling. Seems to me that's hard to find anymore. He wrote prolifically. He wrote humor. He wrote mystery novels, the Fath ...

"Being sundry explorations, made while afoot and penniless in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. These adventures convey and illustrate the rules of beggary for poets and some others." Published in 1919, this is poet Vachel Lindsay's description of his travels "afoot and penniless" across the southern and eastern United States, staying with strangers, reciting or trading poetry for dinner, and along the way, describing in stories and poetry, ...