34 PEPACTON : A SUMMER VOYAGE. 



satisfaction when things come to their worst, a 

 satisfaction in seeing what a small matter it is, after 

 all ; that one is really neither sugar nor salt, to be 

 afraid of the wet; and that life is just as well worth 

 living beneath a scow or a dug-out as beneath the 

 highest and broadest roof in Christendom. 



By ten o'clock it became necessary to move, on 

 account of the rise of the water, and as the rain had 

 abated I picked up and continued my journey. Be- 

 fore long, however, the rain increased again, and I 

 took refuge in a barn. The snug, tree-embowered 

 farm-house looked very inviting, just across the road 

 from the barn; but as no one was about, and no 

 faces appeared at the window that I might judge of 

 the inmates, I contented myself with the hospitality 

 the barn offered, filling my pockets with some dry 

 birch shavings I found there where the farmer had 

 made an ox yoke, against the needs of the next kind- 

 ling. 



After an hour's detention I was off again. I 

 stopped at Baxter's Brook, which flows hard by the 

 classic hamlet of Harvard, and tried for trout, but 

 with poor success, as I did not think it worth while 

 to go far up stream. 



At several points I saw rafts of hemlock lumber 

 tied to the shore, ready to take advantage of the first 

 freshet. Rafting is an important industry for a hun- 

 dred miles or more along the Delaware. The lum- 

 bermen sometimes take their families or friends, and 

 have a jollification all the way to Trenton or to Phil 



