PEPACTON: A SUMMER VOYAGE. 



WHEN one summer day I bethought me of a voy- 

 age down the east or Pepacton branch of the Dela- 

 ware, I seemed to want some excuse for the start, 

 some send-off, some preparation, to give the enterprise 

 genesis and head. This I found in building my own 

 boat. It was a happy thought. How else should I 

 have got under way, how else should I have raised the 

 breeze? The boat-building warmed the blood; it 

 made the germ take, it whetted my appetite for the 

 voyage. There is nothing like serving an apprentice- 

 ship to fortune, like earning the right to your tools. 

 In most enterprises the temptation is always to begin 

 too far along ; we want to start where somebody else 

 leaves off. Go back to the stump, and see what an 

 impetus you get. Those fishermen who wind their 

 own flies before they go a-fishing, how they bring 

 in the trout ; and those hunters who run their own 

 bullets or make their own cartridges, the game is 

 already mortgaged to them. 



When my boat was finished and it was a very 

 simple affair I was eager as a boy to be off; I 



