AN AMATEUR IN THE NORTH WOODS. 



BY CHARLES S. JOSLYN.* 



IT was a pleasant June evening when I first approached 

 the southern boundary of the great New York wilderness. I 

 had been an amateur sportsman from my earliest youth ; and 

 my fondness for the woods was, and has always been, quite 

 inexpugnable. My feelings, therefore, when I came in full 

 view of the long, dark line of primitive forest in the distance, 

 were so exhilarating as to require some vent. 



" Farewell, vain world ! " said I, unconsciously breaking 

 into a sort of monologue ; " adieu to the pomp and glitter and 

 artificiality of the thing they call society ! Welcome, Nature, 

 pure and unadulterated, fresh from the hand of the Creator ! " 



I was here interrupted by a smothered laugh from my com- 

 panion, who had overheard the close of this rhapsody, which, 

 in the exuberance of my feelings, I had uttered in a more 

 elevated tone. Sewall Newhouse was a practiced woodsman, 

 keen and shrewd, and well versed in the lore of the forest, 

 but without much imagination or poetry in his composition. 



" Wait awhile," said he, in his peculiar, dry way. " Don't 

 "be in a hurry about these things. Perhaps you will find 

 some things in ' John Brown's Tract ' that you don't calcu- 

 late on. Besides, as it is getting dark, and we are several 

 miles from the woods, we shall have to get one more night's 

 lodging out of ' society,' as you call it, before we say good 

 by to it." 



The force of the latter consideration was quite irresistible, 

 and had the immediate effect to postpone my enthusiasm for 

 the time. 



* A member of the Oneida Community. 



