while. We don't live high, but we aim to eke out an
existence, as it were. Come and abide with us, S. Q. G. Here is where
the prince of Wales comes when he gets weary of being heir apparently to
the throne. Here is where Bert comes when he has stood a long time,
first on one leg and then on the other, waiting for his mother to
evacuate said throne. He bids dull care begone, and clothing himself in
some of my own gaudy finery he threads a small Limerick hook through the
vitals of a long-waisted worm, as we hie us to the bosky dell where the
plash of the pleasant-voiced brook replies to the turtle dove's moan.
There, where the pale green plush of the moss on the big flat rocks
deadens the footfall of Wales and me, where the tip of the long willow
bough monkeys with the stream forever, where neither powers nor
principalities, nor things present or things to come, can embitter us,
we sit there, young Regina and me, and we live more happy years in
twenty minutes than a man generally lives all his whole life socked up
against a hard throne with the eagle eye of a warning constituency on
him.

It's a good place to come, S. Q. G. Quiet but restful; full of balm for
the wounded spirit and close up to nature's great North American heart.
That's the idea. Perhaps I do not size you up accurately, S. Q. G. You
may be a man who does not pant for the sylvan shade. Very likely you are
a seaside resortist and do not care for pants, but I simply say to you
that if you are a worthy young man weary with life's great
battles--beaten back, perhaps, and wounded--with your neck knocked
crooked like a tom-tit that has run against a telegraph wire in the
night, come up here into northern Wisconsin, where the butternut gleams
in the autumn sunshine and the ax-helve has her home. Come where the sky
is a dark and glorious blue and the town a magnificent red. Come where
the coral cranberry nestles in the green heart of the yielding marsh and
the sand-hill crane stands idly on the sedgy brim of the lonely lake
through all the long, idle day with his hands in the tail pockets of
his tan-colored coat, trying to remember what he did with his
handkerchief.

Come up here, S. Q. G. and be my amanuensis. I want a man to go with me
on a little private excursion from the Dallas of the St. Croix to the
Sault Ste. Marie. I want him to go with me and act as my private
secretary and carry my canoe for me. The salary would be small the first
year, but you would