184 BOOKEVILLE ' TO SARATOGA. 



sociability and onr fire in the stove for cooking, and in an 

 hour's time were housekeeping and eating witli keenest 

 api^etite, and as comfortable as need be. After supper, 

 vTohn took the boat and went off to a point covered with 

 hemlock and soon returned with our bed in the rough, 

 which we quickly, by trimming off the small twigs, con- 

 verted into a fragrant couch. 



The cup of the lad was full. This was "real '»' camping- 

 out. We sat around the evening tire, the elders smoked 

 the iK'aceful pipe, and told stories under the august trees 

 and the starry night, and then we stretc-hed ourselves side- 

 by-side in the tent for the slumber that seeks tired and 

 happy men. But the boy could hardly sleep for delight. 

 It was his tir.st niglit in a tent in the woods on a bed of 

 boughs, — and no veteran of camp and tramp in the forest 

 will wonder that the young heart was running over with 

 exhilarant feeling. But finally the hum of the mosquitoes 

 outside of our netting, and the lap. Inp of the wavelets on 

 the beach lulled us to sleep. 



There was, however, a little unaccustomed stretching of 

 limbs in the morning. There is, indeed, more poetrj' 

 than softness in a " bed of l)Oughs," viewed by morning 

 light. But a swim in the lake, and a little racing up and 

 down the sand beach in the " original Jacobs" bathing- 

 suit, takes out all the kinks and kranks of a night on the 

 ground; and if there is a stick or stone or knoll not exactly 

 adapted to the curves of the l)0(ly, it is removed or reme- 

 died and forgotten. 



The morning discovered to us neighbors. A thin stream 



