How to Write a Classic Story: Buy a Bear

"Left Port Arthur 7 a.m. In train all day. Bought bear $20." That's an actual entry in the diary of Harry Colebourn, a Canadian soldier from Winnipeg who was travelling to Valcartier, Quebec to undergo training on his way overseas in 1914. He bought the female bear cub from a hunter who had killed the animal's mother. Now, Colebourn was a veterinarian by trade and I could absolutely understand