240 MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 



the three camps, and our cabin was a convenient point 

 for him to stop, eat and rest. As Antoine put it, our 

 guest did not carry a rifle because he always started with 

 some "grub," but would prefer to go hungry for a few 

 days, if necessary, to carrying a rifle and such game as 

 he might kill. Then it was all plain. Ah-se-bun could 

 go hungry for two or three days, eat enough to last a 

 week and go on, and he was too lazy to hunt and carry 

 his gun and game. Afterward I learned that he was not 

 peculiar in all this, but that they were the common traits 

 of his race. As near as I can make out from the map of 

 Wisconsin in a school atlas of to-day we were on the fork 

 of the Bad Ax River in what is now Vernon county, and 

 just north of Readstown; but there was no town, village 

 or settlement on the river that we saw or heard of when 

 we went up it in 1855. At any rate, we were near the 

 main forks of the river, and our cabin was between the 

 streams. 



Our Christmas festival was ended. The morrow 

 would bring the regular routine work, only varied by the 

 conditions of weather. 



"We ring the bells and we raise the strain, 

 We hang up garlands ev'rywhere 

 And bid the tapers twinkle fair, 

 And feast and frolic and then we go 

 Back to the same old lives again." 



It was a happy Christmas, because all our simple 

 wants were filled. We were warm and well fed; every 

 wish had been gratified as far as we had wishes, for we 

 could say with Biron, in "Love's Labor's Lost:" 



"At Christmas I no more desire a rose 



Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows." 



And so with minds at peace and bodies prepared for 



