PEPACTON : A SUMMER VOYAGE. 13 



brageous side of the mountain, his motionless form 

 revealed against the dark green as you passed ; the 

 trees and willows and alders that hemmed you in on 

 either side, and hid the fields and the farm-houses 

 and the road that ran near by, these things and 

 others aided the skimmed milk to cast a gloom over 

 my spirits that argued ill for the success of my un- 

 dertaking. Those rubber boots, too, that parboiled 

 my feet and were clogs of lead about them, whose 

 spirits are elastic enough to endure them ? A male- 

 diction upon the head of him who invented them! 

 Take your old shoes that will let the water in and 

 let it out again, rather than stand knee deep all day 

 in these extinguishers. 



I escaped from the river, that first night, and took 

 to the woods, and profited by the change. In the 

 woods I was at home again, and the bed of hemlock 

 boughs salved my spirits. A cold spring run camo 

 down off the mountain, and beside it, underneath 

 birches and hemlocks, I improvised my hearth-stone. 

 In sleeping on the ground it is a great advantage to 

 have a back-log ; it braces and supports you, and it 

 is a bedfellow that will not grumble when, in the 

 middle of the night, you crowd sharply up against 

 it. It serves to keep in the warmth, also. A heavy 

 stone or other point de resistance at your feet is also 

 a help. Or, better still, scoop out a little place in 

 the earth, a few inches deep, so as to admit your 

 body from your hips to your shoulders ; you thus get 

 an equal bearing the whole length of you. I am told 



