He professes an inordinate scorn for comfort of
all sorts. If you are out with him you soon discover that he has a vast
pride in being able to sleep on cobblestones--and does so at the edge of
yellow pines with their long needles. He eats badly cooked food. He
stands--or perhaps I should say poses--indifferent to a downpour when
every one else has sought shelter. In a cold climate he brings a single
thin blanket. His slogan seems to be: "This is good enough for me!" with
the unspoken conclusion, "if it isn't good enough for you fellows,
you're pretty soft."

[Sidenote: The Tough Youth]

The queer part of it is he usually manages to bully sensible men into
his point of view. They accept his bleak camps and voluntary hardships
because they are ashamed to be less tough than he is. And in town they
are abashed before him when with a superior, good-natured, and tolerant
laugh he tells the company in glee of how you brought with you a little
pillow-case to stuff with moss. "Bootleg is good enough for me!" he
cries; and every one marvels at his woodsmanship.

As a plain matter of fact this man is the worse of two types of
tenderfoot. The greenhorn does not know better; but this man should. He
has mistaken utterly the problem of the wilderness. The wild life is not
to test how much the human frame can endure--although that often enough
happens--but to test how well the human wits, backed by an enduring
body, can answer the question of comfort. Comfort means minimum
equipment; comfort means bodily ease. The task is to balance, to
reconcile these apparently opposing ideas.

[Sidenote: The Logic of Woodcraft]

A man is skillful at woodcraft just in proportion as he approaches this
balance. Knowing the wilderness he can be comfortable when a less
experienced man would endure hardships. Conversely, if a man endures
hardships where a woodsman could be comfortable, it argues not his
toughness, but his ignorance or foolishness, which is exactly the case
with our blatant friend of the drawing-room reputation.

Probably no men endure more hardships than do those whose professions
call them out of doors. But they are unavoidable hardships. The cowboy
travels with a tin cup and a slicker; the cruiser with a twenty-pound
pack; the prospector with a half blanket and a sack of pilot bread--when
he has to. But on round-up, when the chuck wagon goes along, the
cow-puncher has his "roll"; on drive with the wangan the cruiser sends
his amp