ed Smith, as we sat in front of oar tents in the evening,
smoking our pipes. "And I am half inclined to think we have started
for home too soon, after all. Spalding's moralizing for the last two
or three days deceived me. I thought, as he was becoming so serious,
he must be getting tired of the woods; but his proposition yesterday
to escort that deer to the shore, and frighten him almost to death,
his jolly humor with our young friends over the way, and the trick he
played on as in regard to the raccoon this evening, satisfies me that
he's got a good deal of the boy in him yet. We shall have to retreat
from the woods slower than I thought, to exhaust it."

"If the cares of business or the duties of life did not call us back
to civilization" said the Doctor, "I could almost spend the summer
among these lakes, only for the luxury of feeling like a boy again.
When I listen to the glad voices of the wild things around as, I can
almost wish myself one of them."

"That coon, for instance," interrupted Smith, "that came so near
getting shot by his chattering."

"I call the gentleman to order," said I; "the Doctor has the floor."

"I sometimes think that it is no great thing after all to be human;"
the Doctor continued, bowing his acknowledgments for my protecting his
right to the floor. "Mind is a great thing, but there is more of
sorrow, anxiety, and care clustering about it, than these wild things
we hear and see around us suffer through their instincts. Reason,
knowledge, wisdom, are great things. To stand at the head of created
matter, to be the noblest of all the works of God, the only created
thing wearing the image, and stamped with the patent of Diety, are
proud things to boast of. But great and glorious and proud as they
are, they have their balances of evil. They bring with them no
contentment, no repose, while they heap upon us boundless necessities
and limitless wants. We are hurried through life too rapidly for the
enjoyment of the present, and the good we see in prospect is never
attained. When we were boys we longed to be men, with the strength and
intellect of men; and now that we are men, with matured powers of body
and mind, true to our organic restlessness and discontent, we look
back with longing for the feelings and emotions of our boyhood. What a
glorious thing it would be if we could always be young--not boys
exactly, but at that stage of life when the physical powers are most
active, and the heart m