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Stories to grow by providing the best treasury of stories, riddles for kids and readers theater scripts
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An old man living in Alaska was sad. All of his friends and family were long gone
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He began to wonder if he should leave the village and start a new life somewhere else
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If I lived someplace new, at least I won't be around all these memories anymore
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He thought, but he also worried if I paddle away to another village and the people there see that I'm alone
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they may think that I had to run away from my home village because I was accused of some disgraceful thing
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Instead, he thought that he would just go off and live in the forest by himself
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The poor man was so sad, traveling alone in the woods. It actually occurred to him to go to the bears and just
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let the bears kill him. The bear village was by a large salmon creek
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So he went over to the creek early in the morning until he found a bear trail and he lay down across the end of
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it. He thought that when the bears came out along this trail
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they would find him and that would be the end by and by as he lay there
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he heard the bushes breaking. Then a large number of grizzly bears came along
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The largest bear led the rest and the tips of his hairs were white
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Then the old man became scared all of a sudden he realized that he did not want to die at all and certainly not by
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bears. So when the leading bear came up to him, the old man stood up
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he announced, I've come to invite you to a feast at that
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the leading bear's fur stood straight up. The old man thought that he was surely done for
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But he spoke again saying now I've come to invite you to a feast
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But if you are going to kill me, I am willing to die
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I am alone. I've lost all of my family and my friends
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As soon as he had said, this, the leading bear turned around and growled to the bears that were following
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Then the group of them turned back the way they had come. After a while
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the man turned and walked towards his village very fast. He wondered if the biggest bear had told the bears behind him to go back
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and get ready because they were invited to a feast. Well, in case that's the way it is
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I better get ready to make a feast. Thought the old man as soon as he got home
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he started to clean up. He took away the old sand around the fireplace and replaced it with clean sand
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Then he went for a load of fresh wood when he told the other people in the village what he was doing and why they
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were all very much scared. They said to him, what made you do such a thing
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The Grizzlies are our enemy. You do not want grizzly bears in your home
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When he was back home, the man took off his shirt and painted his chest
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He put stripes of red across his upper arm muscles, a red stripe over his heart and another across the upper part of his chest
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very early in the morning after he had thus prepared, he stood outside of the door looking for his bears
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Finally, he saw them at the mouth of the creek, led by the same big grizzly bear
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the one with white hair on its tips. When the other village
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people saw the bears, however, they were so terrified that they shut themselves in their houses
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But the old man stood by his door to receive his guests
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He brought them into the house and gave them seats, placing the chief in the middle at the rear of the house and the rest
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around him first, he served them large trays of cranberries preserved in Greece
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The large bear seemed to say something to his companions. And as soon as he began to eat
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the rest started to eat too. They watched him and did whatever he did
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The host followed that up with a course of salmon with sprinkles of clover wheat and dandelion on top for garnish
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Then a course of deer meat with pine nuts for dessert, raspberries with honey
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After they were through, the large bear seemed to talk to his host for a very long time
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It was almost as if the leader bear was giving him a speech for he would look up at the smoke hole every now and
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then and act as though he were talking. When he finished, he went over to his host and licked the paint
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from his arm and chest. And so each of the other bears in turn did the same
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The old man felt as if they were licking his sorrow away
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The day after all this happened, the smallest bear came back to the old man's hut in human form and spoke to the old man
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He had been born a human being. He told the old man but had been captured and adopted by the bears
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This bare man asked the old man if he had understood their chief
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And he said, no, he was telling you the bare man replied that he is in the same condition as
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you, that he too is old and has lost all of his friends
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He had heard of you before he saw you. He said, he told you to think of him when you are mourning for your lost
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ones as he knows how that is too. When the old man asked this bear man
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why he had not told him that day when the bears were at the feast
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he replied that he was not allowed to turn into his human form and speak his native language
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When the bear chief was around after this, whenever the people of the village gave a feast
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they would always invite an enemy to the feast and they would become friends just as the old man had done
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with the chief of the bears
