e tin
mugs as though I had been a traveller interested in the sale of them.

The drinking of hot tea out of these mugs is quite a beautiful art.
You hold the wire handle between finger and thumb and put the little
finger at the edge of the bottom rim. It is thus able to tilt the mug
to the exact angle which is most convenient for drinking. When
Gertrude had learnt the trick, she became perfectly enamoured of the
mugs. She sometimes brings one out at ordinary afternoon tea and
insists that the tea is ever so much better drunk thus than out of
spode.

Smaller mugs of the same shape do for egg-cups, and the egg-spoons I
take to camp are the bone ones, seldom asked for but easy to get in
most oil-and-colour shops. Dessert spoons and forks and table knives
are of the usual pattern, but the former can be had in aluminium and
therefore much lighter than Britannia metal.

The camping-out valise is by all means the rucksack. Never the
knapsack. I am almost ashamed to say this, because as far as my
knowledge goes the knapsack is now obsolete. It may be, however, that
it lingers here and there. If you see one, buy it for a museum if you
like but not for use. The bundle should be allowed to fit itself to
the back, as it does in a canvas bag. Suppose now that you fix the V
point of a pair of braces somewhere near the top of the sack and
bringing the webs over your shoulders, fix them, nicely adjusted, to
the lower corners of the sack, it will ride quite comfortably upon
your back--that is, you have made it from a plain sack into a rucksack
or back-sack. Get or make as many good large strong ones as you have
shoulders in the party to carry them. Have them made of a waterproof
canvas, green or brown, to reeve up tight with strong cord passed
through a series of eyelet-holes and, if you would be quite certain of
keeping out the rain, with a little hood to cover the reeved bag end.

The great bulk of your luggage you will generally find it best to
carry by wheeling it on a bicycle. Spread your ground-sheet on the
floor. On that lay your blankets, doubled so as to make a smaller
square, tent, mattress cover and bed suits on that, then your camping
utensils and all other paraphernalia and roll the whole up into a
sausage about five feet long, when the loose ends of the ground-sheet
have been tucked over as in a brown-paper parcel. Tie it well with
whipcord and fasten it to the top bar of your bicycle frame, leaving
freedom of course