The Project Gutenberg eBook, Woodcraft, by George W. Sears

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Title: Woodcraft

Author: George W. Sears

Release Date: February 11, 2008 [eBook #24579]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOODCRAFT***

E-text prepared by Joseph Gray

WOODCRAFT

by

Nessmuk

PREFACE

Woodcraft is dedicated to the Grand Army of "Outers," as a pocket
volume of reference on woodcraft.

For brick and mortar breed filth and crime,
With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats;
And men are withered before their prime
By the curse paved in with the lanes and streets.

And lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed,
In the smothering reek of mill and mine;
And death stalks in on the struggling crowd--
But he shuns the shadow of oak and pine.

--Nessmuk

CHAPTER I
Overwork And Recreation--Outing And Outers--How To Do It, And Why They
Miss It

IT does not need that Herbert Spencer should cross the ocean to tell
us that we are an over-worked nation; that our hair turns gray ten
years earlier than the Englishman's; or, "that we have had somewhat too
much of the gospel of work," and, "it is time to preach the gospel of
relaxation." It is all true. But we work harder, accomplish more in a
given time and last quite as long as slower races. As to the gray hair--
perhaps gray hair is better than none; and it is a fact that the
average Briton becomes bald as early as the American turns gray. There
is, however, a sad significance in his words when he says: "In every
circle I have met men who had themselves suffered from nervous collapse
due to stress of business, or named friends who had either killed
themselves by overwork, or had been permanently incapacitated, or had
wasted long periods in endeavors to recover health." Too true. And it
is the constant strain, without let-up or relaxation, that, in nine
cases out of ten, snaps the cord and ends in what the doctors call
"nervous prostration"--something akin to paralysis--from which the
sufferer seldom wholly recovers.

Mr. Spencer quotes that quaint old chronicler, Froissart, as saying,
"The English take their pleas