» 



22 ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS. 



often found, can change the unalterable decision. 

 W^at is true in the case of the writer is largely- 

 true in respect to the majority of the profession 

 to which he belongs. Yet it is in the ministry 

 that you find the very men who would be the 

 most benefited by this trip. Whether they should 

 go as sportsmen or tourists, or in both capacities, a 

 visit to the Xorth Woods could not fail of giving 

 them precisely such a change as is most desirable, 

 and needed by them. In the wilderness they 

 would find that perfect relaxation which all jaded 

 minds require. In its vast solitude is a total 

 absence of sights and sounds and duties, which 

 keep the clergyman's brain and heart strung up, 

 the long year through, to an intense, unnatural, 

 and often fatal tension. There, from a thousand 

 sources of invigoration, flow into the exhausted 

 mind and enfeebled body currents of strength and 

 life. There sleep woos you as the shadows deepen 

 along the lake, and retains you in its gentle em- 

 brace until frightened away by the guide's merry 

 call to breakfast. You would be astonished to 

 learn, if I felt disposed to tell you, how many con- 

 secutive hours a certain minister sleeps during 

 the first week of his annual visit to the woods ! 

 Ah me, the nights I have passed in the woods ! 

 How they haunt me with their sweet, suggestive 

 memories of silence and repose ! How harshly the 

 steel-shod hoofs smite against the flinty pavement 



