898 
FOREST AND STREAM 
But the time for rambling through the wood 
was past. Even as Bill turned his head to scan 
the bank for a sight of the tiny trail, Steve deft¬ 
ly swung the bow of the canoe sharply across the 
stream to avoid a protruding log that blocked 
the course, and Bill was hurried by, wondering 
whether the strategy of man had overcome the 
cunning instinct of the beast. Clearly, nature, 
that day, had no sympathy with his regretful 
mood, and with hardened heart hid away even 
the trifling attractions that had delighted and 
allured him in the weeks gone by. Resigning 
himself, therefore, to his saddening fate, he 
grimly plied the paddle with such reckless en¬ 
ergy that his Charon at the stern called out: 
“Guess you must o’ got your second wind. If 
you keep on a boostin’ that way, I’ll have to 
chuck out a drag, or we’ll run down the saw 
mill before we know it. Anxious to get home, 
be you?” 
“No, that isn’t it,” Bill replied. “I’m merely 
trying to cut short my misery. I’ve' got the 
blues.” 
“How’s that?” Steve quickly asked in a con¬ 
cerned manner. “Ain’t you satisfied with the 
time you’ve had and what you’ve got to take 
back with you?” 
“I’m too well satisfied in that respect.” re¬ 
turned Bill, to which gratifying admission Steve 
interjected a relieved “Oh.” Then, shamed into 
a realization of his unreasonableness by Steve’s 
solicitous inquiry, he continued: 
“There’s a story in one of the books I studied 
when a boy, of a chap that had some wonderful 
adventures in wandering round countries of 
which but little was known in his time. In one 
place at which he landed, he found a lot of peo¬ 
ple whose heads had been turned from eating a 
certain plant that grew there, so that they had 
forgotten where they originally lived; and they 
were roosting there and continuously eating the 
stuff instead of packing up their grips and going 
home to milk the cows and do up the other 
chores.” 
“Land! They was in a bad way, I sh’d say,” 
commented Steve. “Wasn’t they nothin’ they 
could take—no physic or something like that— 
to get the dumbed stuff out o’ their systems?” 
“They didn’t want to set it out,” Bill explained. 
They were satisfied with the state of affairs and 
didn’t want anything different.” 
“Guess they didn’t amount to nothin’ then,” 
returned Steve, “an’ didn’t care if the farm went 
to blazes an’ their wives run off with the hired 
men. I’ve seen that kind, an’ they didn’t eat 
nothin’ to get that way, either.” 
“Exactly,” assented Bill, “and that’s about the 
fix I’m in.” 
“O, I see,” rejoined Steve in a manner and 
voice that indicated more amusement than sym¬ 
pathy. “I guess you ain’t jest that bad off.” 
Well, no,” Bill admitted; “for there’s the 
buckboard waiting down at the mill to take me 
out, and there’s Bert unloading the carcasses 
from the other canoe. I guess I’ll be able to get 
home in time to prevent my wife from running 
off with the hired man. But I wish I were 
going in rather than going out.” 
“I Swanny! I wish’t you was.” Steve declared 
with honest seriousness. “I like to hear a sport 
talk that way when he’s goin’ out. Gol darn it! 
I’d ruther not take a sport’s money than have 
him go out dissatisfied; but”—chuckling softly— 
“I ain’t had to refuse no money on that account 
since I been guidin’.” 
The vagaries of late autumn weather were 
again exhibited as Steve gently brought the 
canoe up to the landing stage. A flood of sun¬ 
shine that set the damp sawdust in the mill yard 
steaming like a huge cauldron, and lightened the 
spirits of all, fell from a blue-spotted sky. With 
renewed animation one and all gave willing as¬ 
sistance in loading the buckboard, that bowed 
downwardly with an acuteness that alarmed 
Aeneas and Bill; and presently taking their seats 
in the vehicle the two friends began the last 
stage of “going out.” 
Did you ever “go out”; you under whose notice 
this commonplace recital of the experiences of 
a greenhorn, may fall—out of physical surround¬ 
ings wherein the architectural limitations of the 
human mind are constantly made plain in con¬ 
templation of natural structures reared by a 
Mind that never erred in design; out of physi¬ 
cal conditions that reveal the organization of a 
system so immense as well as complex, that the 
human insect can comprehend only the infini¬ 
tesimal bit of surface on which he crawls; out 
of the great, still woods, at the close of a vaca¬ 
tion spent in an environment from which inhe¬ 
rently is removed every disturbing element in¬ 
corporated in the imperfect economics of civi¬ 
lized communities; out of pleasing pursuits into 
systematized turmoil; out of the harmony of 
concordant minds into the discord of diverse 
ambitions; out of simple, quiet, restful recrea¬ 
tion into the relentless, persistent, yes: con¬ 
scienceless strife for self and power; away from 
reciprocal solicitude and consideration into over¬ 
bearing selfishness; away from the invigorating 
atmosphere of the forests into the dusty and 
disease-strewn streets of over-crowded, leafless 
towns? If you have, you will merely smile 
rather than sneer, at the weakness that overcame 
Bill as he paddled down the West branch, 
“going out.” 
Perhaps you are not a simple minded, senti¬ 
mental enthusiast, and the lure of the woods 
moves you not. If so, Bill will not start a 
quarrel with you for that, and trusts you will not 
start one with him because his tastes are different 
from yours. It will, no doubt, amuse you to 
learn that among his lares and penates is a 
transplanted god, on whom he calls in the long 
months in which about all he sees of the unal¬ 
tered products of nature, are the snow he shovels 
from his sidewalk and the coal he shovels under 
his heating boiler; and the god generously re¬ 
sponds to his supplications whenever he calls— 
the god of West Branch. 
There will, of course, come the vacation at 
the close of which Bill will “go out” for the last 
time; but, fortunately, it is not likely he will be 
conscious that it has come. Steve or Bert will 
paddle him down to the old mill and cheerily 
respond as he waves a farewell—a long farewell. 
Before the next season comes around with its 
crisping frost to blanch and drop the sapless 
leaves, he will have passed over the long trail 
and another will take his place in the bow of the 
canoe or round the open Franklin. For a time, 
a very few will recall the incidents connected 
with the old camp in which he incidentally fig¬ 
ured, and then the memory of his existence will 
die out forever. Such, with varying phases, is 
the termination of every human life, that has in 
it nothing but a possible consciousness of hav¬ 
ing performed with reasonable faithfulness the 
simple duties that came before it. 
But Bill has hope that his last going out will 
not occur for many years to come. This world 
is beautiful in spite of its blotches here and 
there, of human misery; a pleasant place in spite 
of the avariciousness and selfishness that turn 
many aside from opportunities for adding to the 
sum total of human happiness; a comfortable 
place in spite of the fact that since man has 
known it, those of us who have not the wit to 
obtain our daily bread by the sweat of another’s 
brow, have had to earn it by exuding moisture 
from our own. Obviously, Bill is not a pessi¬ 
mist, though he prefers the seclusion of a deep- 
woods camp at certain seasons of the year, to the 
prescribed, confining restrictions of community 
existence; the pleasurable activities of the chase 
and the agreeable associations with things natu¬ 
ral, to the vicissitudes of business and the arti¬ 
ficial conventionalities of society. And when he 
goes out for the last time, he will have gained 
more for himself that was worth gaining, and 
possibly have been a little more useful in his 
day and generation. 
