commence right."

Hot water, ashes, and soap soon restore the pans to pristine
brightness; three frying pans are filled with trout well rolled in
meal; a fourth is used for cooking a can of tomatoes; the coffee is
strong, and everything comes out without being smoked or scorched. The
trout are browned to a turn, and even the O.W. admits that the dinner
is a success. When it is over and the dishes are cleaned and put away,
and the camp slicked up, there comes the usual two hours of lounging,
smoking, and story telling, so dear to the hearts of those who love to
go a-fishing and camping. At length there is a lull in the
conversation, and Bush D. turns to the old woodsman with, "I thought,
Uncle Mart, you were going to show us fellows such a lot of kinks about
camping out, campfires, cooking, and all that sort of thing, isn't it
about time to begin? Strikes me you have spent most of the last
twenty-four hours holding down that log." "Except cutting some night
wood and tending the fire," adds number two.

The old woodsman, who has been rather silent up to this time, knocks
the ashes leisurely from his pipe, and gets on his feet for a few
remarks. He says, "Boys, a bumblebee is biggest when it's first born.
You've learned more than you think in the last twenty-four hours."

"Well, as how? Explain yourself," says Bush D.

O.W.--"In the first place, you have learned better than to stick your
cooking-kit into a tumbled down heap of knots, mulch and wet bark, only
to upset and melt down the pots, and scorch or smoke everything in the
pans, until a starving hound wouldn't eat the mess. And you have found
that it doesn't take a log heap to boil a pot of coffee or fry a pan of
trout. Also, that a level bed of live coals makes an excellent cooking
fire, though I will show you a better. Yesterday you cooked the worst
meal I ever saw in the woods. Today you get up a really good, plain
dinner; you have learned that much in one day. Oh, you improve some.
And I think you have taken a lesson in cleanliness today."

"Yes; but we learned that of the ant--and bug," says number two.

O.W.--"Just so. And did you think all the ants and doodle-bugs
blundered into that grease in one morning? I put 'em in myself--to give
you a 'kink.'"

Bush D. (disgusted).--"You blasted, dirty old sinner."

Second Man.--"Oh, you miserable old swamp savage; I shan't get over
that earwig in a month."

Third Man (plaintively).--"This life in the woods isn'