THE STORY OF AN OUTING 



five-story building, and my lunch-club was at least one 

 hundred yards above the street. I do not know that he 

 ever heard of Gulliver's Travels, but if he had, he certainly 

 must have regarded me as the up-to-date Baron Mun- 

 chausen. 



The^country owes much to this spirit of adventure, 

 wanderlust, a desire to be next to nature and her store- 

 house, from which one may help himself unhindered and 

 have the helping seasoned with the excitement of quest 

 or hunt. I once offered two Monmouth fishermen, fish- 

 ing for the market, four times what they said their 

 labor yielded per day upon the average, to take me out 

 fishing the next day. The reply was: 



"No, to-morrow may be the day of all the year that 

 yields our biggest catch, and should we go with you we 

 would lose it." 



The speculative hope, the element of luck, sweetens 

 the day dreams, buoys up the expectation, parts the 

 mists, gives a view, however blurred, of the airy castles 

 of a better condition, and gives spice to many vocations, 

 and to none more than the frontiersmen, the pioneers of 

 advancing settlement. 



The Daily Inquest 



One of the Carituck duck clubs has inscribed over the 

 fireplace in the gun-room this poetical sentiment: 



"What they hit is history, 

 What they missed is mystery." 



That poignant and significant sentence is a cogent 

 comment upon and characterization of the reminiscences 

 of every shooting-club and camp-fire, and safaris are no 

 exception, but the most fruitful subject of conversation 



80 



