Wild Brother
by . Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press. 1921. 12vo, 140 pp. Illustrated. $2.00.
HERE’S a real nature story — an animal story of the Maine woods with a human story, like a double trail, clear to the end of the volume. Wild Brother, or Bruno, is a bear — a baby bear to begin with, and the smallest baby bear, possibly, ever studied and described; for Wild Brother’s little eyes were not yet opened when he was found, and he weighed all told as much as twelve ounces. He was hardly bigger than a gray squirrel. Yet fourteen years later he stood over six feet high, weighed over four hundred pounds, and with one powerful smash of his forepaw felled his keeper to the floor of the bear-pit and sunk his teeth into the helpless man’s arm. The story of Wild Brother is the story of these fourteen years of Bruno’s life, from the little whimpering thing found in the wintry woods, to the big black angry beast standing over the prostrate form of his careless keeper, resolving life and death.
It is an almost unbelievable story. Born during the long winter sleep of its mother, the small fragment of bear is taken from the den when its mother is shot, carried to Gordon Camp in an overcoat pocket, and given to Mrs. Weldon as a curious bit out of the vast life of the frozen forest.
From this point on the story through all its one hundred and forty pages is an unbroken reel of scenes and incidents covering the fourteen years of Wild Brother’s life in the Maine lumber-camp, at the author’s home in Belmont, Massachusetts, and in the ample cage at the Zoo, not far away on the shores of Spot Pond.
Free from all care, fed on figs and raisins, loved and petted until toward the end of his second year when he became too dangerous to be allowed his liberty among human folk, Wild Brother is a study of animal life unique and altogether thrilling. It is not a child’s wholly, though there is not a child in the world who loves an animal story who will not be held in Bruno’s big arms to the end. It is a story grown-ups will like, and naturalists no less than those who know and who like a good story. Readers who already know Wild Brother will be interested to learn that the kind woman who rescued little Bruno at the lumber camp, animated clearly by a spirit of high respect and compassion for the needs of all young life, has recently given shelter to a small child who was in desperate need of care.
The book is admirably printed, beautifully bound in woodsy covers, and as simply written as Bruno himself could have wished. It is a good thing to read a book without a hint of cant or make-believe, without so much as a flourish of literary style, and to find the matter and simple manner sufficient to the end.
DALLAS LORE SHARP.
These reviews will be reprinted separately in pamphlet form. Copies may be had by any librarian, without charge, on application to the Atlantic Monthly, 8 Arlington St., Boston.