THE OUTDOOR WORLD 
each other as any two sisters could be.” 
Dear mother, you mean every word 
of that. Honestly you do, but pardon 
me. I would like to leave the room to 
shed tears of sorrow at the hopeless- 
ness of your fond delusion. That 
daughter endures the governess and 
the little tent, partly because she has 
not known anything else and partly 
because she cannot get anything else. 
But some day if you will visit a good 
camp you will realize that you are on 
the wrong road. The esprit de corps of 
a girl’s camping with her peers is just 
about as different from that governess 
and her little tent in the back yard as 
were Robinson Crusoe and his man, 
Friday, from the social set in which 
you so much delight. You do not em- 
ploy a dancing master and retire from 
the world to hop upon some little lone 
platform in the valley. No, you like to 
get in the set with others. You like to 
feel you are one of many. You are at 
home with those whose society you 
love and who love you. Unless you 
want to wring tears of compassion 
from me. do not tell me another word 
of that little tent with the sweet gov- 
erness and the tree in the back yard. 
It is about as far removed from camp- 
ing for a girl as the north pole from 
the equator. The governess is right 
until the girl is about nine years of 
age. The value of the teacher’s contin- 
uous presence with the child ends 
where the camp begins and that is 
when the girl is about nine years of 
age. No, that is not too young. Do 
you not know that the girl is always a 
little older in her ambitions than she is 
in your mind? 
Haven’t you and I lived long enough 
to learn the simple lesson about which 
we sometimes theorize, sometimes talk, 
yet sometimes fail to let it permeate 
our life so as to result in action ? Love 
is the greatest thing in the world. It 
is the love and the companionship of 
human beings that engender happiness. 
It is not banks, it is not automobiles, 
no, I will be frank and take you into 
my own field, it is not even good old 
Mother Nature. With my appreciation 
of the delights of the forest, the fields, 
the meadows, the microscope, the teles- 
cope, the grandeur of the heavens and 
the wonders of the invisible, I will be 
frank with you and say that all these 
85 
things put together in a day do not 
give me a tithe of the happiness that a 
kind word of love and appreciation 
sometimes gives. Expressions of com- 
radery do not come from trees nor but- 
terflies, but from people, and the nearer 
those people are to your own walk in 
life, the better they understand you as 
you know they do, and the greater is 
the happiness their appreciation gives 
you. That is the secret, that is why a 
girl likes camp. She is with her com- 
peers. She matches her royal good na- 
ture with that of others, and when she 
goes to bed at night in her bungalow, 
she is not grateful to her canoes nor 
her horses, nor even to the councilors, 
nor the good food of the dining room, 
but what makes her happy is that she 
has had a good time with girls who 
have responded in kind to her own na- 
ture. She has made them happy and 
they have reciprocated in kind. 
Let me tell you that the best thing 
you can do for your daughter is to send 
her away from you for a summer to a 
first-class camp. Send her with some 
one that knows camps and will see that 
she gets started on the right road in 
the right spirit. It may come as a 
shock to you if I tell you that I can 
take your daughter out of a beautiful 
home and insure her happiness in a 
high grade camp and do her a better 
and greater service than father and 
mother both can do. If I had started 
out with that proposition it would have 
immediately incited a spirit of opposi- 
tion and antagonism. You would have 
said, “We are more to our daughter 
than you or any camp in the world can 
be.” But is it "true? 
The great art of getting along in this 
world is after all to be a good mixer. 
The world is made up mostly of people. 
It is these people that can make or un- 
make our prosperity, increase our ad- 
versity and bring us happiness or sor- 
row. Let us start early to learn the les- 
son of getting along with others. 
I have already said a good deal but 
there is much more I should like to say, 
but that I reserve for personal conver- 
sation. Invite me to call on you some 
evening, and I will answer all the ques- 
tions you wish to ask. Address Edward 
F. Bigelow, ArcAdiA : Sound Beach, 
Connecticut. 
