s, knives, and
forks, with us, also a tea-kettle, tin cups, and tea of the choicest
quality, sugar, pepper, salt, and pork. The man who cannot make a meal
where the viands present are moose-meat, bear, jerked venison, fresh
trout, and pork, and for drink the best of tea and the purest and
coldest spring water, had better keep out of the Rackett woods.

The people, whoever they were, who prepared the camp in which we were
domiciled, had an eye to convenience and comfort. The shanty was built
of logs, on three sides, the crevices between which were filled with
moss, and the sloping roof neatly covered with bark, in layers, like
an old-fashioned roof, covered with split shingles. The front was
open, and directly before it was a rough fire-place, with jams, made
of small boulders, laid up with clay, regularly-fashioned, as if
intended for a kitchen. This fire-place was three or four feet high,
and served an excellent purpose, with reference to our cookery, and
the lighting of our shanty at night. It served, also, to conduct the
smoke upward, and prevented it from being blown into our faces, as we
sat in front, at once, of our sleeping-place and our camp-fire. The
only things that reminded us of civilization, aside from what we
carried with us, were the innumerable crickets that, through all the
night, kept up their chirruping in the crevices of this rude
fireplace. There was something old-fashioned and sociable in their
song. These, with the shrill notes of the little peepers along the
shore, were old sounds to us, familiar voices, and they fell
pleasantly on the ear. We had finished our meal, and taken to our
pipes in the evening, as the sun went down among the old forests, away
off in the west. The greyness of twilight came stealing over the
water, and grew into darkness in the beautiful valley where that lake
lay sleeping. The stars stole out silently, and set their watch in the
sky, and calmness and repose rested upon everything around us.

"I remember," said Smith, "the first year that I was in college, of
hearing two learned professors disputing about what sort of animal it
was that made the piping noise we hear in the marshy places, and
stagnant pools, in the spring time, usually known as peepers. One
insisted that it was a newt, or small lizard; and I remember that he
went to his library, and brought a volume which proved his theory to
be correct. The other denied the authority of the author, and insisted
that the