CAMPING OUT 



finer flavor when he drinks it from a 

 birch bark cup of his own making. Tea 

 made in a frying-pan has an aroma never 

 known to such poor mortals as brew 

 their tea in a teapot, and no mill ever 

 ground such coffee as that which is tied 

 up in a rag and pounded with a stone or 

 hatchet-head. A sharpened stick for a 

 fork gives a zest to the bit of pork " friz- 

 zled " on as rude a spit and plattered on 

 a clean chip or a sheet of bark, and no 

 fish was ever more toothsome than when 

 broiled on a gridiron improvised of green 

 wands or roasted Indian fashion in a 

 cleft stick. 



What can make amends for the loss of 

 the camp-fire, with innumerable pictures 

 glowing and shifting in its heart, and 

 conjuring strange shapes out of the sur- 

 rounding gloom, and suggesting unseen 

 mysteries that the circle of darkness 

 holds behind its rim ? How are the wells 

 of conversation to be thawed out by a 

 black stove, so that tales of hunters' and 

 fishers' craft and adventure shall flow till 

 the measure of man's belief is overrun ? 

 How is the congenial spark of true com- 

 panionship to be kindled when people 



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