ary
traveller, is troublesome to pitch and troublesome to strike again; and
even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A
sleeping-sack, on the other hand, is always ready--you have only to get
into it; it serves a double purpose--a bed by night, a portmanteau by
day; and it does not advertise your intention of camping out to every
curious passer-by. This is a huge point. If a camp is not secret, it is
but a troubled resting-place; you become a public character; the
convivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper; and you must
sleep with one eye open, and be up before the day. I decided on a
sleeping-sack; and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high
living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed,
constructed, and triumphantly brought home.

This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two
triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and as the top and bottom
of the sack by day. I call it "the sack," but it was never a sack by
more than courtesy: only a sort of long roll or sausage, green
waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep's fur within. It was
commodious as a valise, warm and dry for a bed. There was luxurious
turning room for one; and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I
could bury myself in it up to the neck; for my head I trusted to a fur
cap, with a hood to fold down over my ears, and a band to pass under my
nose like a respirator; and in case of heavy rain I proposed to make
myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones,
and a bent branch.

It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge package on
my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast of
burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals--flighty, timid,
delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive
to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow
galley-slave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; in short, he's
an uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of
the voyager. What I required was something cheap and small and hardy,
and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to
a donkey.

There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect
according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as
Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive
she-as