The Mountaineer 47 



Almost every kind of vocation was represented 

 among us; "doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief;" mothers 

 and fathers, bachelors unabashed, single ladies quite 

 content, a merry widow, a lover or two, and a bonnie 

 lass and laddie to complete our family circle. 



We varied, too, in weight, between a substantial 

 two hundred twenty-five — the weight of the law of 

 course — and slender little eighty-six; as for age we 

 were all young except two who were just younger. 

 With all these chances for variation in temperament, 

 every note of wit and humor was struck in this assem- 

 blage. It rang out in prolonged laughter from the 

 slope to the northwest at almost any time of day ; it ac- 

 companied the rites of making or of going to bed, it 

 radiated in quiet significant smiles from the official 

 tent; in shafts of repartee it flew from tent to tent. 

 Not the character and attainments of leaders, nor the 

 presence of distinguished guests would suffice entirely 

 to counteract it. Perhaps no single moment so ex- 

 pressed the prevailing tone in Moraine Park as that, at 

 the end of every evening program when Dr. Van Horn 

 rose. 



The momentary hush that prefaced the wanderer's 

 night song, the instant of silence afterward to hear the 

 bugles sound ''Taps" from the ridges near by, as it 

 echoed and re-echoed; by the darkened mountains, the 

 increasing splendor of the stars above ; the dying down 

 of the hospitable fire below — all this was a fitting bene- 

 diction to the pleasures of the day and a welcome prep- 

 aration for the night. 



As Mr. Curtis once observed casually "The moun- 

 tains either lift a man up or pull him down." What 

 they had maintained in one man was evident the second 

 Sunday night, when Nature quotations were being 

 given around the fire. 



In his turn, arose from a place on the slope above 



