sooner. The balsam and the hemlock heal his aches very quickly. If one
is awakened often during the night, as he invariably is, he does not
feel that sediment of sleep in his mind next day that he does when the
same interruption occurs at home; the boughs have drawn it all out of
him.

And it is wonderful how rarely any of the housed and tender white man's
colds or influenzas come through these open doors and windows of the
woods. It is our partial isolation from Nature that is dangerous; throw
yourself unreservedly upon her and she rarely betrays you.

If one takes anything to the woods to read, he seldom reads it; it does
not taste good with such primitive air.

There are very few camp poems that I know of, poems that would be at
home with one on such an expedition; there is plenty that is weird and
spectral, as in Poe, but little that is woody and wild as this scene
is. I recall a Canadian poem by the late C. D. Shanly--the only one, I
believe, the author ever wrote--that fits well the distended pupil of
the mind's eye about the camp-fire at night. It was printed many years
ago in the "Atlantic Monthly," and is called "The Walker of the Snow;"
it begins thus:--

"'Speed on, speed on, good master;
The camp lies far away;
We must cross the haunted valley
Before the close of day.'"

"That has a Canadian sound," said Aaron; "give us more of it."

"'How the snow-blight came upon me
I will tell you as we go,--
The blight of the shadow hunter
Who walks the midnight snow.'

And so on. The intent seems to be to personify the fearful cold that
overtakes and benumbs the traveler in the great Canadian forests in
winter. This stanza brings out the silence or desolation of the scene
very effectively,--a scene without sound or motion:--

"'Save the wailing of the moose-bird
With a plaintive note and low;
And the skating of the red leaf
Upon the frozen snow.'

"The rest of the poem runs thus:--

"'And said I, Though dark is falling,
And far the camp must be,
Yet my heart it would be lightsome
If I had but company.

"'And then I sang and shouted,
Keeping measure as I sped,
To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe
As it sprang beneath my tread.

"'Nor far into the valley
Had I dipped upon my way,
When a dusky figure jo