Lake Umbagog.
1907
August
let him go among them unarmed and in a spirit of peace
and loving kindness towards them all. Then he will learn
many things which the bearers of guns do not know and
cannot be made to believe.
  All this and much more to the same effect has been
said of late by the "nature fakers" when placed on the defensive.
They have even hinted broadly that their critics are (?)
by unworthy motives, such as professional (?) and the like.
Thus the war of words has raged merrily enough - with
public trust and sympathy still largely on the side of the
"nature fakers", it would appear.
  There is an old saying to the effect that "a lie well stuck
to is as good as the truth". It may seem for a time, at
least with the general public, who, it is to be feared, like
sensation matter and are not over particular as to its reliability.
But no writer, however attractive and
interesting, who deals deliberately and extensively in fiction
disguised as truth can hope to permanently delude his readers.
Sooner of later the real character of his literary work will
become generally known and his reputation for veracity forfeited.
If he be a "nature faker" his chances of imposing, even for
a brief time, on naturalists of large field experience and on
hunters who have spent most of their lives in the woods,
are remote indeed. Such men are not easily deceived about
matters with which they have been familiar since boyhood
and which concern them deeply. Being equally free from
that blind trust in self-constituted authority to which the
inexperienced are given and from that indiscriminatory
incredulity which so often prompts the narrow and prejudiced
mind to distrust everything foreign to its own experience,
they are quite able to judge for themselves, with perfect