een easy for
me to have been like him, an isolated and solitary man, had
circumstances in early life thrown me into a position to have followed
the original bent of my nature."

"And yet," said Spalding, "if you will look into the philosophy of the
matter, you will see that this diversity of tastes, as you call it, is
not so great after all; that is, that the origin of the impulse which
sends some men away from society among the solitudes of the
wilderness, and of that which holds others in constant communion with
the busy scenes of life, is very nearly the same. It is the love of
adventure, of excitement, a restlessness for something new, a desire
for change. This impulse is controlled, shaped by circumstances of
early life, by education and association; but the foundation of it at
last is the thirst for excitement, the love of adventure. One man
wanders away into the wilderness in pursuit of it. Another plunges
into society in pursuit of the same thing. These hardy men who are
here with us, who were reared on the borders of civilization, enjoy
the solitudes of their wilderness quite as much, and upon the same
general theory, as we do the society to which we have been accustomed;
and they plunge alone into the one with quite as much zest as we do
into the other, in the pursuit of excitement. Here is Cullen, now, who
has spent more time alone in the wilderness than almost any other man
outside of the trappers and hunters of the prairies of the West, I
appeal to him if it is not rather a love of adventure than of nature
which sends him on his solitary rambles in the forests?"

"May be the Judge is right," replied Cullen, as he rubbed the shavings
of plug tobacco in the palm of his left hand with the ball of his
right, while he held his short black pipe between his teeth,
preparatory to filling it, "may be the Judge is right, I rather think
he is, and let me tell you I've met with some queer adventures, as you
call them, in these woods too; some that I wouldn't have gone out
arter if I'd known what they were to've been afore I started. I've
been movin' back from what you call civilization for five and twenty
year, because I didn't like to live where people were too thick, and
where there was nothing but tame life around me. I've a kind of liking
for the deer and moose, and haven't any ill will towards, now and then,
a wolf or a painter. I like a rifle better than I do the handles of a
plow, and I'd rayther bring down a