"Hey up there, George! What in the world are you doing? I came near shooting you."
"Aw hullo!--I come down now," replied Takahashi.
I had seen both lynx and lion climb down out of a tree, but nothing except a squirrel could ever have beaten Takahashi. The spruce was fully one hundred and fifty feet high; and unless I made a great mistake the Jap descended in two minutes. He grinned from ear to ear.
"I no see you--no hear," he said. "You take me for big cat?"
"Yes, George, and I might have shot you. What were you doing up there?"
Takahashi brushed the needles and bark from his clothes. "I go out with little gun you give me. I hunt, no see squirrel. Go out no gun--see squirrel. I chase him up tree--I climb high--awful high. No good. Squirrel he too quick. He run right over me--get away."
Takahashi laughed with me. I believed he was laughing at what he considered the surprising agility of the squirrel, while I was laughing at him. Here was another manifestation of the Jap's simplicity and capacity. If all Japanese were like Takahashi they were a wonderful people. Men are men because they do things. The Persians were trained to sweat freely at least once every day of their lives. It seemed to me that if a man did not sweat every day, which was to say--labor hard--he very surely was degenerating physically. I could learn a great deal from George Takahashi. Right there I told him that my father had been a famous squirrel hunter in his day. He had such remarkable eyesight that he could espy the ear of a squirrel projecting above the highest limb of a tall white oak. And he was such a splendid shot that he had often "barked" squirrels, as was a noted practice of the old pioneer. I had to explain to Takahashi that this practice consisted of shooting a bullet to hit the bark right under the squirrel, and the concussion would so stun it that it would fall as if dead.
"Aw my goodnish--your daddy more better shot than you!" ejaculated Takahashi.
"Yes indeed he was," I replied, reflectively, as in a flash the long-past boyhood days recurred in memory. Hunting days--playing days of boyhood were the best of life. It seemed to me that one of the few reasons I still had for clinging to hunting was this keen, thrilling hark back to early days. Books first--then guns--then fishing poles--so ran the list of material possessions dear to my heart as a lad.