People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1896 — TREED BY A BEAR. [ARTICLE]

TREED BY A BEAR.

Terrible Experience of a Schoolteacher In Sullivan County. Lucretia Ritter, a pretty little schoolteacher of Sullivan county, N. Y., had a terrible experience recently. She is in charge of a country sohool in a lonely portion of the Shunk mountains, in the vicinity of Elk * lake, and boards at a farmhouse over a mile distant. For convenience the young teacher has been accustomed to take a short cut through a lonely woods, thus saving herself a long walk. » As she was traversing the path on her way to the sohoolhouse she observed what she supposed was a yearling calf lying directly in her path. She bravely waved her lunch basket to scare the animal, but was almost petrified with horror when she discovered that it was a full grown bear. The bear made a rush for her, and the girl in her fright climbed partly up a crooked tree. To add to her terror, her clothing became fastened to a broken limb of a tree, and the frightened girl was unable either to ascend or descend. The bear in the meantime had devoured her lunch basket and the flowers off her hat, which were dropped during the girl’s flight. The bear kept the girl a prisoner for over three hours and was finally frightened off by the arrival of Farmer Swartz. After Mi6s Ritter had been released from her perilous position she fainted and was carried in Swartz’s arms to her boarding house, a distance of almost a mile. She is entirely prostrated since her terrible experience, and it is feared that the shock may prove fatal.—Philadelphia Times.