y American mode of getting an
outing is becoming more and more familiar. It leads to our young folks
indulging in all sorts of strengthening pursuits. It takes them away
from less profitable places, and the good it does need not be confined
to the boys. Young women may swim, fish, and row like their brothers,
but the life has gains and possibilities, as to which I would like to
say something more. In a well-ordered camp you may be sure of good food
and fair cooking. To sleep and live in the air is an insurance against
what we call taking cold. Where nature makes the atmospheric changes,
they are always more gradual and kindly than those we make at any season
when we go from street to house or house to street.

My brothers during the war always got colds when at home on leave, and
those who sleep in a chinky cabin or tent soon find that they do not
suffer and that they have an increasing desire for air and openness.

To live out of doors seems to be a little matter in the way of change,
and that it should have remarkable moral and intellectual values does
not appear credible to such as have not had this experience.

Yet, in fact, nothing so dismisses the host of little nervousnesses with
which house-caged women suffer as this free life. Cares, frets, worries,
and social annoyances disappear, and in the woods and by the waters we
lose, as if they were charmed away, our dislikes or jealousies, all the
base, little results of the struggle for bread or place. At home, in
cities, they seem so large; here, in the gentle company of constant sky
and lake and stream, they seem trivial, and we cast them away as easily
as we throw aside some piece of worn-out and useless raiment.

The man who lives out of doors awhile acquires better sense of moral
proportions, and thinks patiently and not under stress, making tranquil
companions of his worthy thoughts. This is a great thing, not to be
hurried. There seems to me always more time out of doors than in houses,
and if you have intellectual problems to settle, the cool quiet of the
woods or the lounging comfort of the canoe, or to be out under "the huge
and thoughtful night," has many times seemed to me helpful. One gets
near realities out of doors. Thought is more sober; one becomes a better
friend to one's self.

As to the effect of out-door life on the imaginative side of us, much
may be said. Certainly some books get fresh flavors out of doors, and
you see men or women greedily