8 WOODLAND IDYLS. 



which I have often mentioned in another work. 1 

 To the east a third of a mile is my nearest 

 neighbor and from his famous "limestone 

 spring" I shall carry my drinking water. The 

 branch at the base of the cliff or knoll will be 

 my bathing place, and an old oak top my source 

 of wood for cooking. The burrow of a marmot 

 is within twenty feet of my south tent wall and 

 the home of some fox squirrels in the surround- 

 ing oaks. The cry of the dog-day locust, full 

 of the languor of the August tide, will lull my 

 daylight hours and the calls of the katydids and 

 tree crickets those of my evenings. 



It is not so much the days that I wish to 

 spend on this wooded knoll, as the nights, the 

 gloaming of the evenings, the twilight of the 

 morns. On many occasions days have I spent 

 here; that is, the hours from eight A. M. to six 

 P. M., part or all of them, but what do the 

 woods have to offer by night? What ghosts of 

 the Indians of long ago roam by? What foxes, 

 raccoons, skunks and other night prowling var- 

 mints wander here in search of provender? 

 That would I know. Both ghosts and varmints 

 would I welcome. 



A tent should be only a sleeping place, a shel- 

 ter for food, bedding and other possessions in 

 time of storm, not an abiding place. When one 

 "camps" his days should be passed out of 



1 Boulder Reveries. 



