around the fire at
night? Not much,--of the sport of the day, of the big fish he lost
and might have saved, of the distant settlement, of to-morrow's
plans. An owl hoots off in the mountain and he thinks of him; if a
wolf were to howl or a panther to scream, he would think of him the
rest of the night. As it is, things flicker and hover through his
mind, and he hardly knows whether it is the past or the present that
possesses him. Certain it is, he feels the hush and solitude of the
great forest, and, whether he will or not, all his musings are in
some way cast upon that huge background of the night. Unless he is
an old camper-out, there will be an undercurrent of dread or half
fear. My companion said he could not help but feel all the time that
there ought to be a sentinel out there pacing up and down. One seems
to require less sleep in the woods, as if the ground and the
untempered air rested and refreshed him 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