CHAPTER XVIWILDERNESS SILENCE

[7]If there is a privy in the camp great care should be taken that, for every reason, it is placed at a sufficient distance from cabins and tents. It shouldnotbe placed on a slope that could possibly drain off into any water supply. An abundance of ashes should always be kept within the privy and no water of any kind be poured into the box. A few cans of chloride of lime should, if possible, be kept on hand; and one can opened and in use in the closet. Chambers and slop pails should not be emptied in the immediate vicinity of the cabins but at some distance and in different localities. There is no greater abomination on the face of the earth than a dirty camp, and no place which so thoroughly tests one’s love of order, decency and cleanliness. If you are following the trail and go into “stocked” camps for the night, shake and air the blankets thoroughly, and, out of courtesy to those who will follow you in their use, shake and air the blankets when you get out of them in the morning.

If a girl is delicate or under the weather in any way, she must take more than the ordinary care of herself or she may have a head-on collision with out-and-out illness.The new mode of living, the various kinds of exposure—especially to wet weather—, the larger quantities of food eaten because of an appetite stimulated by the vigorous outdoor life, the temptation to overdoing—all these possibilities should be kept in mind and avoided as dangers. Don’t be silly about overdoing. Harden yourself slowly for the life; avoid competition. It is far better to have lived your camp life successfully and to have come out of it fresh and vigorous, than it is to have done a few “stunts” and have come out of it fagged, overstrained and ill. It is well the first days of camp life to try to eat less than you want; by this act of self-control you will avoid the plague of constipation which follows so many campers. Moderate eating will mean more sleep, too. Abundant water drinking and a few grains of cascara should be able to remedy all the ills to which camp flesh is heir.

As a girl takes thought about this care and culture of the body, making herself clean within and without, higher lessons and perfections, both of the mind and of the soul will come to her as inevitably as the earth answers to the touch of rain and sun. Do you want to be happy? Very well then, learn in the woods to be well, consider the laws of health, and remember first, last, and always that good health, not money or position or fame or any shallow beauty of feature, is the greatest and soundest security for happiness.

Mostfriendships among girls, and older people, too, suggest that if there is one thing which is hated, it is silence. If silence does happen to get in among us in camp, how uneasy we are! After an awkward pause we all begin to talk at once,—any, every topic will serve to break the hush which has fallen upon us. And if we don’t succeed in getting rid of this silence—something apparently to be regarded as unfriendly and ominous—we make excuse to do something and do it.

But of silence Maurice Maeterlinck, the great Belgian author of “The Bluebird” and of many other plays, too, says that we talk only in the hours in which we do not live or do not wish to know our friends or feel ourselvesat a great distance from reality. But where do we live more truly than in our camp life? Then he goes on to say what I think is equally true: That we are very jealous of silence, for even the most imprudent among us will not be silent with the first comer, some instinct telling us that it is dangerous to be silent with one whom we do not wish to know or for whom we do not care or do not trust.

Let us admit at the very beginning that one does well to be on one’s guard with the people with whom one does not care to be silent,—but one does not go camping with those people,—or, as the case may be, if we, ourselves, have a guilty conscience or an empty head much talking serves its ends. And there is another situation in which it seems almost impossible to be silent. There is someone for whom we have cared very much. Things have changed, there has been a misunderstanding, we have altered orsomeone else has made trouble between us. And the first thing we notice is that we no longer dare to be silent together. Speech must be made to cover up our common lack of sympathy. We talk, how we talk,—anything, everything! Even when we are happy we run to places where there is no silence, but now, if only we can be as noisy as children and avoid the truth of the sad thing which has happened to us!

Again, let us admit at once that there are different kinds of silence: There is a bitter silence which is the silence of hate, and another which is that of evil thoughts, and a hostile silence, and a silence which may mean the beginning of a storm or a fierce warfare. But the only silence worth having is friendly and it is of that we need to think, and it is that we can have by the camp fire in our wilderness life.

Isn’t it true after all that the question which most of us ought to ask ourselves seriouslyis not how many times we have talked but how many times we have been silent. Sometimes one wonders whether we are ever still and whether if we are to be silent, it is not a lesson which must be learned all over again. How many times have we talked in a single day? We can’t tell, for the number of times is so great that we can’t count them. And the times we have been silent? And I don’t mean how many times we have said nothing. To say nothing is not necessarily to be silent. Well, we can’t count the times we have been silent either, but that is because we haven’t been still at all. Yet there is a big life in which there is no speech and no need of it. Are we never to give ourselves a chance to live that?

Do you remember your first great silence? Was it going away from someone you loved? Perhaps it was a joyous visit to your grandmother or to an aunt or to see a friend, but it meant leaving your mother andyou had never left her before. Or maybe it was your first year at boarding school or your freshman year at college. Do you remember the silence that came over you then and all that filled it? And do you remember how it wore away but gradually—that grip the stillness had within you and upon you? You know now that that first silence will never be forgotten. Or was it a return to those you loved and you realized as never before how incomparably dear these people were to you and that only silence could express that dearness? Or was it the silence of a crowd—awe inspiring silence which foretells the acclaim of some great event of happiness or a cry of woe? Or the silence of the wilderness as you looked down from a mountain side into some great valley of lakes? Or was it the death of someone you loved, and the silence that overcame you forced you not only to suffer as never before but also to think asyou have never done about the meaning of life?

In that first great silence how many things that are precious revealed themselves to us. There was love; we did not realize how it was woven into every fibre of our lives; there was companionship; we did not realize how bitterly hard it would be to forego it; there was new experience; till it came we could not have known how much a part of our lives the old experience was. How many things in us that had been asleep were suddenly awakened! How much was that great silence worth to us then and now? Perhaps an unhappy or stricken silence we called it then; but even if it meant death or separation was it after all completely unhappy? Have we taken into account the wealth of conviction, of deepened experience, of increased love it brought us? Could anything so rich be in any true sense unhappy?

“Silence, the Great Empire of Silence,” cried Carlyle, “higher than the stars, deeper than the Kingdom of Death.” The world needs silent men but even more, I think, does it need silent women. Carlyle—and you should get what you can of his books and read them—calls silent men the salt of the earth. Might not silent women or silent girls be called double salt? He says that the world without such men is like a tree without roots. To such a tree there will be no leaves and no shade; to such a tree there will be no growth; a tree without roots cannot hold the moisture that is in the earth and it will soon fade, soon dry up and let everything else around it dry up, too.

Have you not heard women and girls with an incessant silly giggle or a titter or a laugh that meant just nothing at all and yet which was heard, like the dry rattle of the locust, morning, noon and night? Nervousnesspartially; empty-headedness maybe, or a mistaken idea of what is attractive. Silliness of that kind has no place in camp. Nothing is more wearying, more lacking in self-control than such a manner, nothing so exhausts other people. Such giggling or laughing or silly talking is to the mind what St. Vitus’s dance is to the body—an affliction to be endured perhaps but certainly not an attraction and not to be cultivated.

Is it not silence that opens the door to our best work? How about that work you enjoyed so much and did so well? How did you prepare for that? Yes, I know all about the work you bluffed through and even managed to get a high record in, but that work you really enjoyed, how was that done? Is it not silence, too, that opens the door to our dearest and deepest companionships, our profoundest sorrows, our greatest joys? Anyway this wilderness silence is all worth while thinking about, is it not?

Why should this great silence, this friendly wilderness power be considered anti-social? Really, is it not most social? Does it not bring us all nearer together, sometimes even when we are afraid to be nearer to one another? Does it not make us all equal, making us aware of those profound things in life which we all have in common? Silence can say, can teach, what speech can never, to the end of the world, learn to express. It is safe to say that as soon as most lips are silent, then and then only do the thoughts and the soul begin to live, to grow, to become something of what they are destined to be, for as Maeterlinck says, silence ripens the fruits of the soul. Never think that it is unsociable people or people who don’t know how to talk who set such a value on silence. No, it is those who are able to talk best and most deeply, think best and most deeply, who, following the long trail, recognize the fact that words can never afterall express those truths which are among us—no, neither love, nor death, nor any great joy, nor destiny can ever be expressed by word of mouth, by speech.

Itwas our second day in camp,—a camp on the edge of the Maine wilderness. Around us were many lakes—ponds as the natives call them—Moosehead, Upper Wilson, Lower Wilson, Little Wilson, Trout Pond, Horse-shoe Pond, and a dozen others. About us on all sides were the forest-covered mountains, and burning fiercely, twenty miles distant, a large forest fire which filled the horizon with dense, yellow smoke.

From our camp, consisting of a red shanty, a log cabin in which I am now sitting, my dog beside me, thinking what I shall say to you about a remarkable family I saw, and, looking up at the cabin ceiling, its log ridge-pole and supports between which arebirch bark cuts of trout and salmon caught in the lakes, of which I have spoken—from our camp we look out and down on a wonderful view. Immediately in front of the log cabin is a meadow, the last on the edge of this wilderness, then the serrated line of pointed firs, which marks the edge of the woods at the foot of the meadow. Beyond this line miles of tree-tops, pines, birches, maples, beeches, after that the shining lakes, and beyond them the mountains. There is not a house in sight. For that matter thereisno house to be seen, not even a log cabin.

As was said, there is a meadow in front of the cabin, and over to the right beyond our view are two other meadows. In Maine—as far north as this, anyway—the farmers have only one crop of hay, and, when there is so much forest, and the winter is long, and cattle are to be fed, every meadow has to be counted upon for all it will bear of hay. It was a foregone conclusion that somebodywould need and use the crop from the meadow down upon which my cabin looked.

And, sure enough, the second day we were in camp, along the road bumping and thumping over the big stones came a large hay wagon: behind it, rattling and jarring, a mowing machine and hay rake. But that hay wagon, what didn’t it hold? In the first place, there was the driver, then a big packing box, a tent rolled up, sacks of feed for the horses, a baby’s perambulator, three children, a woman, a hammock, a long bench, some chairs, including a rocking chair, and several small boxes, packed to overflowing with articles of various kinds. For an instant it looked as if they were house-moving, and then, recollecting that there was no house to which to move, I came to the conclusion that they were merely haying.

I watched them spread the big tent-fly and make it fast. I saw them take out the large packing box, converting that into a table, onwhich some of the children put flowers in an old bottle; I watched them set out the bench and chairs, swing the hammock, lay the improvised table with the enamel dishes which they took from the little boxes, and, in general, make themselves comfortable.

The children had pails for berries, and they began to pick berries in a business-like fashion. The woman sat in the hammock and took care of the baby—oh, I forgot to mention the baby. The farmer and his lad hitched and unhitched the horses, starting within a few minutes to work with the mowing machine, and leaving two of the horses tethered to a tree. Evidently this was work and a picnic combined—to me a new way of getting in your hay crop. But the more I watched it and thought about it the more I liked it. And their dinner with the berries as dessert—well, I knew just how good, there in the sunshine, with appetites sharpened by work, it must taste to them all.

Inside the cottage shanty of our camp, one member of the household, at least, had been doing her work in quite a different spirit. It seemed to me that there was nothing which this cook, a large, robust woman, with an arm with the strength of five, had not found fault with and made the worst of. Her first groan was heard in the morning at six o’clock—in getting up myself to go to my writing table I had cruelly awakened her—and, of course, as she went to bed only half after seven the night before, she had been robbed of her necessary sleep. As I say, I heard her first groan—the sun was shining gloriously, and I had already had a sun bath and a cold sponge and my morning exercises—while she continued to lie in bed and to make every subsequent groan until after seven o’clock fully audible.

She began that beautiful day and its work in resisting everything. She had never been in such a place before, and a very nice convenientcamp we, ourselves, thought it. She groaned while she pumped water—I do not know whether she or the pump made the more noise. She complained loudly because of the mice. Oh, no, she could not set a mouse trap: she had never done such a thing before! And then, when we got a cat, she complained because of the noise the cat made in catching the mice. I do not know precisely what kind of a cat she expected, possibly a noiseless, rubber-tired cat, that would catch noiseless, rubber-tired mice. She would not carry water—even a two-quart pail full—her back was not strong enough. She had never seen such dishes as these we were using, nice, clean enamel ware dishes, with blue borders. She had never heard of such a thing as hanging milk and butter in a well to keep them cool. Dear me, she never even thought of going to such a place where they did not have ice that would automatically cool everything, and which the ice-man kindlyhanded to her in pieces just the size which she preferred. She said the spring—a beautiful spring whose waters are renowned for their purity and healthfulness much as the waters of Poland Spring are—she said that the spring had pollywogs in it and frogs. She could not string a clothes-line, but stood in tears near the big trunk of a balsam fir, holding the line helplessly in her hands and looking up to the branch not more than two inches above her head. While one of us flung the end of the clothes-line over the branch and made it fast to another she remarked with contempt, sniffing up her tears, that it was not a clothes-line, anyway, which was perfectly true, for it was only a boat cord, but it did quite as well. When she walked down from the meadow, that glorious golden meadow, where the happy family was picnicking and hay-making at the same time, and through which wound a little path down to the spring’s edge, shelifted her skirts as if she were afraid they might be contaminated by the touch of that clean, sweet-smelling, long grass. Still groaning she would fetch about a quart of water. And groaning, still groaning, she went to bed at night “half-dead,” as she expressed it, as the result of about five hours of work, in which she was all the time helped by somebody else.

Of course she was “half-dead.” It is a wonder to me now, as I think of it, that she did not die altogether. Instead of taking things as they were in the sun-filled day, with its keen, crisp air, its wonderful view, instead of feeling something of the beauty and health and sun and wind-swept cleanness of it all, she had resisted every detail of the day, every part of her work, she had, in short, found fault with everything. This day, that would have seemed so joyous to some people, had not meant to her an opportunity to make the best of things and tobe grateful for the long sleep, the sunshine, the invigorating air, the beauty, the light work, but merely a chance to make the worst of things, to throw herself against every demand made upon her.

Out in front of the cabin the farmer swept round and round with his mowing machine, his big, glossy horses glistening in the sunshine, the sharp teeth of the machine laying the grass in a wide swath behind him. He seemed peaceful and contented, although it was warm out in the direct sunlight, and the brakes were heavy and the horses needed constant guiding. Down below, nearer the spring, his wife swung in the hammock, and the children picked berries, fetched water, and were gleefully busy. It was a scene of simple contentment with life.

When the father came back for his dinner, which was eaten under the spread of a tent-fly and from the top of a packing box, decorated in the center with flowers andaround the edges by contented faces, I said to him: “You seem to be having a jolly time.”

“Why, yes, so we are,” was his reply. “I offered the folks who own this meadow such a small sum of money for the hay crop I didn’t think I’d get it. I thought some one else was sure to offer them more, but I guess they didn’t, for I got it. You see, it’s pretty far away from my farm to come out here haying.”

“And so you make a picnic of it?”

“Yes, we are making a picnic of it. The children like it. It’s great fun for them, and it gives my wife, who isn’t very strong, a chance to rest and be out of doors. I enjoy it, too. I like to see them have a good time.”

“Well,” I said, before I realized I was taking him into my confidence, “I wish you could make our camp cook see your point of view.”

“Why, don’t she like it?” he asked innocently.

“Like it? I am afraid she doesn’t. The other day it rained and leaked in through the kitchen roof onto her ironing board, and when we found her she had her head on the board and was crying.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” he said. “Why didn’t she take that board out of the way of the leak? We don’t mind a little thing like a leak around here, especially when folks are camping. Having her feel that way must make a difference in your pleasure. Well, there is ways of taking work. Now, probably, she’s throwing herself against her work, and making it harder all the time.”

“That’s exactly what she is doing,” I commented dryly.

“It’s a pity.” There was sympathy in his voice. “For it’s such a lot easier to make a picnic out of what you are doing—homemade camping, we call this. My folks alwaysfeel that way about it. Even the hardest work is easier for taking it the right end to. My children are growing up to think, what it doesn’t hurt any man to think, that work is the best fun, after all. It’s the only thing you never get tired of, for there is always something more to do.”

Itwas my somewhat tempered good fortune, several years ago, to spend two or three weeks in an exceedingly bleak place on a far northern coast. The only genial element about this barren spot was its sea captains, and whence they drew their geniality heaven only knows. They made me think of nothing so much as of the warm lichen which sometimes flourishes upon cold rocks. There strayed into this neighborhood a couple of canoes. “Waal,” exclaimed one of the old salts, viewing this water craft skeptically, “it’s the nearest next to nothing of anything I have ever heard tell on.”

And that is precisely what the canoe is: the nearest next to nothing in water craftwhich you can imagine. It is in precisely this nothingness that its charm lies, its lightness, its grace, its friskiness, its strength, its motion, its adaptability to circumstances. There are times when it acts like a demon, and there are other times when its intelligence is almost uncanny. The canoe is always high spirited, and, with high-spirited things, whether they be horseflesh or canoe, it does not do to trifle. The girl who expects to take liberties with the canoe has some dreadful, if not fatal, experiences ahead of her. Several years ago I was out in a motor boat with some friends. Two of them had been, or were, connected with the United States Navy; another was my sister, and a fourth was a college friend. My friend happened to see a pistol lying on a seat near her. She had never had anything to do with pistols, and, on some insane impulse of the moment, she picked it up and leveled it at me. I was stunned, but not sothe men on the boat. Such a shout of rage and indignation, such a leap to seize the pistol, and such a rebuke, I have never been witness to before. These men were navy men, and they knew how criminally foolish it is to fool with what may bring disaster. It is those who know the canoe best and are best able to handle it, who are most cautious in its use. Those of you who expect to treat it as you might the family horse would do well to look out.

The canvas-covered cedar canoe is the best. If you are going to take a lot of duffle with you, the canoes will have to be longer than you need otherwise have them: about eighteen feet, and only two people to a canoe. The canoe will cost you from twenty-five dollars up, and this item does not include the paddle. The paddle should be bought exactly your own height; it will then be an ideal length for paddling. Its cost will be a little more or a little less thana dollar and a half. You should have a large sponge, tied to a string, on one of the thwarts. This you will use for bailing when necessary.

If you have had any experience with a canoe, you will not abuse it, and will not need to be told not to abuse it. If it is a light one, and you are a strong girl, you should learn to carry it Micmac fashion on the paddle blades, a sweater over your shoulders to serve as cushion. Watch a woodsman and see the way he handles a canoe. One of the very first things you will observe is that he never drags it about, but lifts it clean off the ground by the thwarts, holding the concave side toward him. Also, you should observe his soft-footed movements when he is stepping into a canoe. If a canoe is not in use it should be turned upside down. Never neglect your canoe, for a small puncture in it is like the proverbial small hole in a dike. If you let it go, you will have aheavy, water-soaked craft or a swamped one. Water soaking turns a seemingly intelligent, high-spirited canoe, capable of answering to your least wish or touch, into the most lunk-headed thing imaginable, a thing so stupid and so dead and so obstinate, that life with it becomes a burden. Remember that the wounds in your canoe need quite as much attention as your own would.

The balance of a canoe is a ticklish thing. To the novice, the day when she can paddle through stiff water while she trolls with a rod under her knee and lands a two- or three-pound salmon unaided, seems far off. I am by no means a past-master in the art of canoeing, yet I have often done this, and am no longer troubled by the question of balance in a canoe. So much for encouragement! Most of an art lies, granting the initial gift for it, in custom or habit. Make yourself familiar with the traits of your canoe, work hard to learn everything youshould know about it, and your lesson will soon be learned.

When you are going to get into it, have your canoe securely beside a landing, and then step carefully into the center and middle. Bring the second foot after the first only when you are sure that you have your balance. The next thing is to sit down. Be certain that it is not in the water. The only satisfactory recipe for this delicate act is to do it. No girl should step into a canoe for the first time without some one at the bow to steady it. Very quickly you will learn clever ways of using your paddle to help in keeping the balance. Until you do, you can’t be too careful, or too careful that others should be careful. Take no chances in a canoe. If any are taken for you, hang on to your paddle. It is well to have an inflatable life-preserver, but, best of all, is it to know how to swim. Never move around in a canoe, or turn quickly to look over yourshoulder. A canoe is a long-suffering thing, but once “riled” and its mind made up to capsize, heaven and earth cannot prevent that consummation and your ducking or even drowning.

BROOK TROUTRAINBOW TROUTSMALL-MOUTH BASSBROWN TROUTROCK-BASSWHITE BASSSHEEPSHEADYELLOW PERCHPIKEPIKE PERCHPICKERELCATFISH

BROOK TROUTRAINBOW TROUT

BROOK TROUT

RAINBOW TROUT

SMALL-MOUTH BASSBROWN TROUT

SMALL-MOUTH BASS

BROWN TROUT

ROCK-BASSWHITE BASS

ROCK-BASS

WHITE BASS

SHEEPSHEADYELLOW PERCH

SHEEPSHEAD

YELLOW PERCH

PIKEPIKE PERCH

PIKE

PIKE PERCH

PICKERELCATFISH

PICKEREL

CATFISH

Become skillful in the use of the paddle, and the best way to learn is through some one who knows how. Paddling is an art and a very delightful one, requiring much skill of touch and strength. Although as a girl I cared most for rowing, I have in the last ten years become so devoted to the paddle stroke, to its motion and touch and efficiency, that rowing only bores me. Get some one, a brother, a father, a friend, a guide, to teach you the rudiments of paddling. These once learned, canoeing is as safe as bicycling and not more difficult. It is all in learning how.

ROD.HOOKS.SIMPLE WINCH REEL.TROUT FLY.TROLLING SPOONS.

ROD.

HOOKS.

SIMPLE WINCH REEL.TROUT FLY.TROLLING SPOONS.

SIMPLE WINCH REEL.TROUT FLY.

SIMPLE WINCH REEL.

TROUT FLY.

TROLLING SPOONS.

The writer is an old-fashioned fisherwoman and goes light with tackle. However, I have noticed that the simplicity of fishingtackle does not in the least interfere with luck. If you are going to fish with worm, hook, and sinker, you will need no advice. Perch, pickerel, black bass, cat-fish, and others to be caught in still fishing, will be your quarry. As a rule you will troll for pickerel and pike, and there is no sport more pleasant in the world than that which is to be had at the end of a trolling spoon: the motion of the boat, the vibration of the line, the spinning of the spoon, and then the sudden strike, with all its possibilities for taking in big fish. I defy anyone to have a more exciting time than netting a salmon from a trolling line and landing it successfully in a canoe. But this is not a thing to be attempted by the novice. Much better let the salmon go and save yourself a ducking.

The finest art of all fishing is fly-fishing. One either does or does not take to it naturally, after one has been taught something of the art by brother, father, or guide. Alas,that the fish greediness of campers is making good fly-fishing, even in the wilderness, more and more difficult to get! Personally, if I am after trout or salmon, “plugging” or “bating,” as it is called, seems to me an unpardonably coarse and stupid sport. Yet our lakes have been so abused by this process that fly-fishing is frequently impossible. To sit or stand in a canoe, casting your line, the canoe taking every flex of your wrist; to see the bright flies, Parmachenee Belle or Silver Doctor—or whatever fly suits that part of the country in which you are camping—alight on the surface as if gifted with veritable life, and then to be conscious of the rush, the strike, and to see a rainbow trout whirling off with your silken line, is to experience an incomparable pleasure. To have a strike while the twilight is coming on, a big fellow, with the line spinning off your reel as if it would never stop, to see your salmon leap into the air and strike the water, to reel himin, then plunge! and down, down he goes; to feel the twilight deepening as you try to get him in closer to the canoe again; to know suddenly that it is dark and that the hours are going by; to feel your wrist aching, your body tense with excitement; to think that you are just tiring him out, that you have almost got him—almost, then a rush, a plunge, the line slackens in your hand, and he is gone. That is fisherman’s luck, and great luck it is, even when the fish is lost.

ROD CASE.FELT-LINED LEADER BOX.CASE FOR TACKLE.LANDING NET.CREEL.

ROD CASE.FELT-LINED LEADER BOX.CASE FOR TACKLE.

ROD CASE.

FELT-LINED LEADER BOX.CASE FOR TACKLE.

FELT-LINED LEADER BOX.

CASE FOR TACKLE.

LANDING NET.CREEL.

LANDING NET.

CREEL.

Only a few words about fishing tackle. Have a good rod or two, but don’t begin your experience at fishing with expensive tackle. The cheaper rod will do quite as well until you learn what you want. For trolling the best rod is a short steel one. For fly-fishing you will always use split bamboo or some similar wood. You will have accidents, so have reserve tackle to fall back upon. In any event do not buy a heavyrod, and never buy anything with a steel core in it. If you can afford it, get a first-class reel, one that works easily and is of simple mechanism. A simple winch reel is the best. Avoid patented contraptions. While you are using them hang your rods up by the tips. In any event keep them dry and in as good condition as possible. Enameled silk line you must have for all trout fishing. For other kinds of fishing it does not so much matter what you do use, provided the line is strong and durable. Be sure to have extra lines to fall back on.

ANGLING KNOTS.

Leaders, the details about flies to be used, their color, angling knots made in fastening leaders or line or fly, methods for keeping your flies in good order and condition, the use of the landing net, necessary repairs to be made, the skill of the wrist in casting, the best sort of trolling, the care of fish, all these things will come to you through experience, and all suggest how much, how delightfullymuch, there is to be learned in the best of all sports.

Go to some first-rate sporting goods’ house for your flies; they will tell you what kinds you need, as well as answer other questions.

Agirlwho has learned to camp will not only have her own pleasures greatly increased, but she will also add to those of her friends, becoming a better companion for her chums, her father, her brother; for camping, if it is anything, is a social art. It is far better for a girl to be out in the world which demands all of one’s attention, one’s eyes and ears and nose and feet and hands and every muscle of the entire body, than to be leading a sedentary life at home, or analyzing emotions or sentimentalizing about things not worth while. The big moose which unexpectedly plunges by provides enough emotions to last a long time; the land-locked salmon that threatens to snap the silken line, enough excitement.

You can’t learn all that there is to be learned in the school of the woods through one camping expedition. It would be rather poor sport if you could. Don’t be afraid to ask questions about what you don’t know. Keep on asking them until you are wood-cultivated. The wilderness is your opportunity to make up for those vitally interesting facts about life which are not taught in schools. Above all, have a map of the country in which you are, and study it. Keep that map by you as if it were Fidus Achates himself, and refer to it whenever there is need. The girl or woman in camp who never knows where she is is a bore, sponging upon the good-nature and intelligence of others who have taken the trouble to familiarize themselves with the lie of the land. Such a girl never makes any plans, never takes the initiative, never gives anyone a sense of rest from responsibility. There are girls and older women who think it rather clever tobe unable to tell east from west, north from south. I may say here that in camp they belong to the same class of foolish incompetents who in college boast that they cannot spell—presumably because they are devoting themselves to a much higher call upon their intelligence than anything so superficial as spelling! If camping means anything in the world, it means coöperation, and this coöperation should be all along the line.

THE DIPPER.

If you have an innate sense of direction, train it. If you have none, do not venture out into the wilderness except with someone who has. Always tell people where you are going. If you are not familiar with the use of a rifle you would better have a shrill whistle or a tin horn to use in case you want to summon anyone. Sun and wind should be part of your compass; the trees, too. You will, of course, learn how to blaze a trail, and the sooner you do this the better, for it is good training in following out a point ofthe compass. The wilderness is full of signs of direction for your use, some of which are certain to be serviceable at different times, and some of which will not prove dependable. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. At high noon of a September day, if you turn your back squarely to the sun, you will be looking directly north. The wind is a helper, too. When the sun rises, notice the direction of the wind, and, while it does not shift, it will prove a good compass or guide. If it is very light, wet the finger and hold it up. By doing this the wind will serve you as a compass. Remember, also, that the two lowest stars of the Big Dipper point toward the North Star, which is always a guide to be used in charting a wilderness way. Also on the north sides of trees there is greater thickness to the bark and more moss. This is, I suppose, because the trees, being unexposed to the sunlight on the north side, retain the moisture longerthere. Some say, too, that the very topmost finger of an evergreen points toward the north. Even in civilization they usually do. To become familiar with a compass is a very simple matter. Every boy learns this lesson, and there is no reason why girls should not do the same. Never buy a cheap compass; it is not to be relied upon. To the amateur in the woods a good one is not a friend at which to scoff. A few expeditions out behind the cabin will teach you all you need to know about its use. If by some miscalculation a girl should get lost, let her realize then that the great demand is that she shall keep her head on her shoulders, where it has been placed, and where she will need to make use of it. Let her sit down and think, reviewing all that has happened, and trying to solve the problem of what she is to do. A panic is the last and worst thing in which she can afford to indulge. To most people at some time or other comes the convictionthat they are lost—a conviction happily dispelled in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand. In this, as in everything, a miss is as good as a mile, and one does well to make light of unavoidable mistakes.

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If, by any chance, you should be lost, don’t run around. If you have no compass or if darkness is coming on, settle down where you are. Devote your energies to occasional periods of shouting and to building a camp fire, keep your body warm and dry and your head cool.You will be found.And remember that there are no wild creatures to be feared in our camping wilderness. You have nothing of which to be afraid except your own lack of common sense. Here is a chance for your “nerve” to show itself.

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