A SUMMER VOYAGE 5 



and there, as you rounded some point, and flapping 

 disconsolately ahead till lost to view, or standing 

 like a gaunt spectre on the umbrageous 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 farmhouses 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 undertaking. Those 

 rubber boots, too, that parboiled my feet and were 

 clogs of lead about them, — whose spirits are elastic 

 enough to endure them? A malediction upon the 

 head of him who invented them I Take your old 

 shoes, that will let the water in and let it out again, 

 rather than stand knee-deep all day in these extin- 

 guishers. 



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 came down off the mountain, and beside it, 

 underneath birches and helmocks, I improvised my 

 hearthstone. 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 



