o walk on snow-shoes. She has
survived at least one of her doctors, and is, I believe, to this day a
wholesome and vigorous wife and mother.

What large wealth did to help in these two cases may be managed with
much smaller means. All through the White Mountains, in summer, you may
see people, a whole family often, with a wagon, going from place to
place, pitching their tents, eating at farm-houses or hotels, or
managing to cook at less cost the food they buy. Our sea-coast presents
like chances. With a good tent or two, which costs little, you may go to
unoccupied beaches, or by inlet or creek, and live for little. I very
often counsel young people to hire a safe open or decked boat, and, with
a good tent, to live in the sounds along the Jersey coast, going hither
and thither, and camping where it is pleasant, for, with our easy
freedom as to land, none object. When once a woman--and I speak now of
the healthy--has faced and overcome her dread of sun and mosquitoes, the
life becomes delightful. The Adirondacks, the Alleghanies, and the
Virginia mountains afford like chances, for which, as these are in a
measure remote, there must be a somewhat more costly organization. I
knew well a physician who every summer deserted his house and pitched
tents on an island not over three miles from home, and there spent the
summer with his family, so that there are many ways of doing the same
thing.

As to the question of expense, there is no need to say much. All over
our sparsely-inhabited land places wild enough are within easy reach,
and the journey to reach them need not be long. Beyond this, tent-life
is, of course, less costly than the hotel or boarding-house, in which
such numbers of people swelter through their summers. As to food, it is
often needful to be within reach of farm-houses or hotels, and all kind
of modifications of the life I advise are possible.

As to inconveniences, they are, of course, many, but, with a little
ingenuity, it is easy to make tent-life comfortable, and none need dread
them. Any book on camp-life will tell how to meet or avoid them, and to
such treatises I beg to refer the reader who wishes to experiment on
this delightful mode of gypsying.

The class of persons who find it easy to reach the most charming sites
and to secure the help of competent guides is, as I have said in another
place, increasing rapidly. The desire also for such a life is also
healthfully growing, so that this peculiarl