THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 39 



forgive him. Did you? And forgive the whole world and everybody 

 in it. 



"I know you are that kind of a man or I would not be writing this. 



"How often have you really and honestly laid out all night by a 

 campfire in all kinds of weather, maybe your fire burns, maybe it don't, 

 maybe the pitch stump that you set fire to smokes all night and you 

 spend half your time chasing the smoke around the tree. You blame the 

 wind and everything else on earth for being the cause of it and when 

 morning comes maybe you have slept and possibly you haven't, and 

 every bone in your body aches, and when God's sunlight gets up and 

 you make a bee line for camp to find the boys have already started out 

 to find you. Of course you are mad, but the boys' one touch of nature 

 has the remedy. Nobody asks you any questions, they just naturally 

 know. You tell them that you got too far from camp; of course they 

 kid you a little, but that warm meal that somebody always stays in 

 camp to have ready for you, that three or four cups of coffee made in 

 an old burnt coffee pot and flavored from a can of condensed milk that 

 you have punched one little and one big hole in its top, the best that 

 was ever drank. That coffee. The boys. Of course I lied when I told 

 you that I got too far from camp. X was just plain lost; of course you 

 know I lied. Do you forgive me? Of course you do, and do I go out 

 again that day? Of course I do. 



"So I am writing this letter to ask you to forgive me for all my 

 little harms; mine and yours, they are just alike. 



' ' So now I sit around home of evenings, things have not gone just 

 right, somebody has bumped into me and we had a word or two, my 

 mind runs back to the night I spent chasing the smoke around that 

 stump, to that bunch of human beings, to the hardships you and I have 

 gone through with and never complained. I forget my grouch and the 

 grudge I had against my fellow human being and I forgive him and 

 everybody else. Do you? Of course you do. You, and all people like 

 you. 



"So here's Happy New Year, boys, and lots of them. Here's to 

 the trails and our campfires and our songs and sorrows. Let's buck 

 life and its propositions like we do our hunting game, and what's more 

 we will get the game, whether it's life's propositions or it's on the trail. 



Yours, 



M. D. ORANGE." 



UNIQUE PUNISHMENT 



By Aldo Leopold, in The Bulletin 



An impressive lesson was placed before the boys of Albuquerque, in 

 the novel sentence imposed upon Euland Greer and Seth Holmes after 

 they were convicted of killing robins, meadowlarks and flickers, upon 

 complaint of the Albuquerque Game Protective Association, of New 

 Mexico. Judge W. W. McClellan fined the boys $25 each, and sus- 

 pended the fine on condition that the defendants, aged 16 and 14, would 

 execute the following orders of the court: 



First, it was ordered that the boys go out and secure signed 

 pledges from fifty boys, promising to help protect the song birds and 

 faithfully to observe the game laws. 



Second, that the boys distribute an armful of the association's 

 literature on game protection, and cards giving the game laws of New 

 Mexico. 



