I shall some day indite an ode.

This is the way you go about it: First, you take a large and healthy
woodsman with an axe, who cuts down a tree--a substantial tree. Because
this is the frame of your bed. But on no account do this yourself. One
of the joys of a bough bed is seeing somebody else build it.

The tree is an essential. It is cut into six-foot lengths--unless one is
more than six feet long. If the bed is intended for one, two side pieces
with one at the head and one at the foot are enough, laid flat on a
level place, making a sort of boxed-in rectangle. If the bed is intended
for two, another log down the center divides it into two bunks and
prevents quarreling.

Now begins the real work of constructing the bough bed. If one is a good
manager, while the frame is being made, the younger members of the
family have been performing the loving task of getting the branches
together. When a sufficient number of small branches has been
accumulated, this number varying from one ton to three, judging by size
and labor, the bough bed is built by the simple expedient of sticking
the branches into the enclosed space like flowers into a vase. They must
be packed very closely, stem down. This is a slow and not particularly
agreeable task for one's loving family and friends, owing to the
tendency of pine-and balsam-needles to jag. Indeed, I have known it to
happen that, after a try or two, some one in the outfit is delegated to
the task of official bed-maker, and a slight coldness is noticeable when
one refers to dusk and bedtime.

Over these soft and feathery plumes of balsam--soft and feathery only
through six blankets--is laid the bedding, and on this couch the wearied
and saddle-sore tourist may sleep as comfortably as in his grandaunt's
feather bed.

But, dear traveler, it is much simpler to take an air-mattress and a
foot-pump. True, even this has its disadvantages. It is not safe to
stick pins into it while disrobing at night. Occasionally, a faulty
valve lets go, and the sleeper dreams he is falling from the Woolworth
Tower. But lacking a sturdy woodsman and a loving family to collect
branches, I advise the air-bed.

Fishing at Bridge Creek, that first evening, was poor. We caught dozens
of small trout. But it would have taken hundreds to satisfy us after our
lunchless day, and there were other reasons.

One casts for trout. There is no sitting on a mossy stone and watching a
worm guilefully struggling to att