FOREST AND STREAM 
21 
BOOK REVIEWS 
VER perennial, Dan Beard is out 
with a new book (Shacks, Shel¬ 
ters and Shanties, — Chas. 
Scribner’s Sons, New York) 
designed to teach the young 
idea of the nation, and older 
codgers as well, how to chop 
and btlild the fifty-seven varie¬ 
ties of rustic things which Dan originated and 
which have been used, lo these many years, by his 
ardent pupils from coast to coast. The present 
volume embodies all that the author has given 
before, and a great many new crooks and turns 
and angles. Dan is a genius in this line. No 
doubt he could have taught Eve in the Garden of 
Eden how to make a complete dress out of a fig 
leaf, and judging from the time Dan has been 
with us, he may have done so. 
The new book is illustrated to the last degree 
of perfection with the author’s plain and simple 
outline drawings, so that even he who is a bung¬ 
ler at woods carpentry can, at the expense of a 
few saplings, a pail full of nails, a loop or two 
of rope and a few bunged-up fingers, achieve 
some wonderful results in sheltering himself 
against imaginary storms under more or less 
imaginary conditions. 
“Eheu fugaces!” The good old days are gone, 
but even we who have been around here for a 
longer time than we care to admit to the insur¬ 
ance companies, cannot remember when Dan was 
not telling us in our earlier days how to build 
shacks and shelters, boats and other contraptions, 
that added joy to existence, even though they 
scared our good mothers out of ordinary peace 
of mind. 
If the writer remembers correctly, Dan, while 
an idol with the boys, did not enjoy such a high 
reputation among the elders. Between them and 
our versatile author it was something like the 
sentiment expressed by the elderly spinster lady 
to the new minister. 
“Dear Pastor, how we enjoy your ministra¬ 
tions. Why, we did not know what sin was until 
you came among us.” 
So when axes were spoiled, fine tools put out 
of commision and the adjoining shrubbery hacked 
to provide saplings, parents were wont, after hav¬ 
ing invoked the usual corrective measures on the 
culprits, to express a wish that “the man who 
started all this sort of thing” were near for just 
a minute. 
But let that not bother Dan now. He provides 
joy to many who recollect those days with a ten¬ 
der memory almost of pain, and he is still doing 
it for the men of to-morrow. 
The writer cannot think of any boy of his ac¬ 
quaintance who was ever drowned or seriously 
hurt by carrying out Dan’s ideas, but can recollect 
distinctly hanging perilously from tree-tops, amid 
the wreck of an amateur effort to build one of 
the eerie coops that Dan told us how to construct 
and can recollect also having gone through the 
bottom of some of Dan’s boats in the middle of a 
rather largish lake. That was not Dan’s fault at 
all. It was simply the bungling carelessness of 
the boy builders. 
And what a difference there was between en¬ 
gaging in one of those architectural dreams of 
Dan’s, and doing as a penance the same sort of 
chopping in the backyard at the request of stern 
parents, and with the utilitarian object of build¬ 
ing up the wood pile! Though the same axe 
was used, and the same motions employed, how 
the poetry did run out of the axe-handle and 
buck-saw, and how tantalizing it was to realize 
that all nature was aquiver with spring, and the 
skee-re-lee of the red-wing blackbird down by the 
river just coaxing the boy population to a swim. 
Looking over Dan’s book now, the twinge 
comes instinctively in an old codger’s shoulder as 
he thinks about living in one of Dan’s sod houses 
or bank caves. And yet that was the one thing 
that used to appeal to us in the days of Mr. 
Beadle, whose literary efforts in the way of ad¬ 
venture and buccaneering tales are not known to 
a present mollycoddle generation. 
How we used to build those caves and enact 
the scenes and adventures of the passing Beadle 
hero! Probably as you, gentle reader, look back, 
you can picture the thing yourself and remember 
how Our Hero, pursued by pretty much all the 
Indian population left after he had got through 
killing off the greater part of them in the pre¬ 
vious installment, suddenly dived, with the ar¬ 
rows whizzing about him, into some concealed 
hole and emerged a moment later into the under¬ 
ground cabin, decked with furs and fawn-skins, 
and how the beautiful Senorita and her aged 
father, whom he had rescued a chapter or two 
before rose to greet him. Just write the rest of 
this yourself. You can do it, as the Irishman 
says, “with your hands tied behind your back.” 
Dan Beard is a genius in construction. He 
ought to have been Edison; he ought to have in¬ 
vented the flying machine, but it is enough that 
his uncanny wizardry with the axe has made two 
generations of boys happier. Give Dan an ordin¬ 
ary-sized porous plaster, a few sheets of tin, a 
can full of nails and a couple of pieces of string 
and he will produce a pretty good model of a 
phonograph. Why he did not do it before any¬ 
one else thought of the idea still remains a mys¬ 
tery. His.ideas run to practical matters however, 
and he does not as a rule, try to interest his boy 
audiences in a lot of things not worth while, like 
fiddling two sticks together to produce about once 
in ten times a spark of fire—a very foolish thing 
when we come to think of it, as long as there are 
matches to be had and perfectly good pants on 
which to scratch them. 
To compare Dan Beard with Peter Pan is not 
quite right, for Peter brings up the thought of 
effeminacy, and anyway Peter was not a real 
character. Dan is the embodiment of Yankee in¬ 
genuity; there is nothing fairylike about him. 
Dear old Dan! The thatch on his own roof of 
thought must be pretty well weatherbeaten, and 
where it has grown thin, repairs by the use of a 
second-hand tomato tin and a pot of white lead 
are impossible. That does not matter, for as 
long as as he remains with us, he will be the 
Youngest Boy on earth and yet the Oldest one 
alive. 
THE END OF THE TRAIL. 
N THE opinion of not a few people capable 
of expert judgment, the best American 
book of travel written in the last quarter 
of a century is “The End of the Trail,” by E. 
Alexander Powell (Charles Scribners’ Sons, $3.00 
net.) The author is a brilliant writer, with pow¬ 
ers of observation that lend weight to whait he 
says. Better yet, he possesses a poetic imagina¬ 
tion, and clothes it on ocoasion with a vocabulary 
as rich and varied as the coloring of the Grand 
Canyon of Colorado and the desert scenery 
through which he takes the reader. The book in 
brief is the record of a trip by automobile from 
the extreme southwestern part of the United 
States almost if not quite to Alaska. It is a vol¬ 
ume that every lover of America should read; 
even more, it is a book that the jaded European 
traveller should go over carefully, if only to learn 
that his own country possesses a history and a 
wealth of beauty that cannot be found abroad. 
Now that European travel is cut off, Mr. Powell 
has opened to his countrymen the route of a 
journey that surpasses any other trip in the world 
almost, and one that will make better citizens of 
all who have the time and means to undertake it- 
His is a book that can be warmly commended, 
and one that ought to be read by every American 
citizen. When Mr. Powell says that much of our 
American scenery makes that of the rest , of the 
world puny in contrast, he knows whereof he 
speaks, for there is scarcely a foot of the habit¬ 
able globe which this adventuresome and keen¬ 
witted traveller has not penetrated himself. 
