ittle of the
pleasant has been mingled with it, in three months your general
impression of that trip will be good. You will look back on the hard
times with a certain fondness of recollection.

I remember one trip I took in the early spring following a long drive
on the Pine River. It rained steadily for six days. We were soaked to
the skin all the time, ate standing up in the driving downpour, and
slept wet. So cold was it that each morning our blankets were so full
of frost that they crackled stiffly when we turned out.
Dispassionately I can appraise that as about the worst I ever got into.
Yet as an impression the Pine River trip seems to me a most enjoyable
one.

So after you have been home for a little while the call begins to make
itself heard. At first it is very gentle. But little by little a
restlessness seizes hold of you. You do not know exactly what is the
matter: you are aware merely that your customary life has lost savor,
that you are doing things more or less perfunctorily, and that you are
a little more irritable than your naturally evil disposition.

And gradually it is borne in on you exactly what is the matter. Then
say you to yourself:--

"My son, you know better. You are no tenderfoot. You have had too long
an experience to admit of any glamour of indefiniteness about this
thing. No use bluffing. You know exactly how hard you will have to
work, and how much tribulation you are going to get into, and how
hungry and wet and cold and tired and generally frazzled out you are
going to be. You've been there enough times so it's pretty clearly
impressed on you. You go into this thing with your eyes open. You
know what you're in for. You're pretty well off right here, and you'd
be a fool to go."

"That's right," says yourself to you. "You're dead right about it, old
man. Do you know where we can get another pack-mule?"

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