, comfort, advice, knowledge, whatever I
demand or may need. They are not dead things, these books. They are
living personalities, which have enriched and are enriching the world.
When you boys listen to me you are not listening just to an audible
voice. You are listening to an expression of that invisible something
that we call the spirit--the true personality. And so it is that the
writer of a great or good book never dies. His spiritual expression is
there on the printed page just as much as if he were giving expression
to it in audible speech. So with all these great and wonderful men and
women constantly about me how can I ever be lonely? And then when I step
out-of-doors it is directly into the temple of God. His nearness and
presence are manifest in every phase of nature. The trees are alive,
some of them sleeping, but alive nevertheless, and others not even
sleeping. Sometimes I wonder if the very rocks are not alive. The
elements seemingly war with one another, but there is nothing mean or
petty or base in the mighty struggle, as there invariably is in the
conflict of human passions. The Indian sees the Great Spirit in the
lightning, and hears him in the rushing wind and the thunder, and is not
afraid, but bows in reverence. He has a sense of nearness to the creator
and loses it when he is confined in the man-made world of brick and
stone and steel and is eager to get back. It is elemental in him. In
nature he sees God made manifest. We call him a savage, but I sometimes
wonder if he is not more nearly a true child of the Father of all than
many so-called civilized men who win the plaudits of the world and seem
to forget whence they came and whither they will go.

"But I didn't mean to preach a sermon, but just to give you an idea of
why Pat and I prefer to be savages, if you please, and spend our lives
with nature. Now, Pat, what are your plans? When do you start in for
camp? Haven't heard a word since you left from"--he paused at a warning
wink from Pat, and then finished--"your partner. Big Jim was down from
the lumber camp this week and reported seeing a silver gray. If you
could catch a couple of those fellows that problem of going away to
school would pretty nearly settle itself."

"What's a silver gray?" asked Hal, whose knowledge of fur bearers was
rather limited.

"A color phase of the common red fox," replied the doctor, "and if not
worth its weight in gold it is worth so much that a single skin is