INTRODUCTION xi 
pains they have bestowed upon them. It looks 
like a work of love. At last the volumes, so far 
as the art of book-making is concerned, seem like 
a ripe product. They please the eye and hand 
like mellow fruit. There is nothing harsh or crude 
about them. My ideal book is one that is gentle 
and submissive to the hand, that yields itself freely, 
that does not snap at you when you open it, or 
show any haste or ill-temper in any way. Softness, 
flexibility, clearness, and a look of ease and good- 
will about the page, — these to me are the virtues 
of the material make-up of books, and these virtues, 
it seems to me, this new edition has. 
I cannot bring myself to think of my books as 
“works,” because so little “work” has gone to the 
making of them. It has all been play. I have 
gone a-fishing, or camping, or canoeing, and new 
literary material has been the result. My corn has 
grown while I loitered or slept. The writing of 
the book was only a second and finer enjoyment 
of my holiday in the fields or woods. Not till the 
writing did it really seem to strike in and become 
part of me. 
A. friend of mine, now an old man, who spent 
his youth in the woods of northern Ohio, and who 
has written many books, says, “I never thought of 
writing a book till my self-exile, and then only to 
reproduce my old-time life to myself.’ The writ- 
ing probably cured or alleviated a sort of homesick- 
