e he escorts us to our apartments, groping
secretly in his memory to recall our names. When we walk down the steep,
quaint streets to revel in the purchase of moccasins and water-proof
coats and camping supplies, we read on a wall the familiar but
transformed legend, L'enfant pleurs, il veut son Camphoria, and
remember with joy that no infant who weeps in French can impose any
responsibility upon us in these days of our renewed honeymoon.

But the true delight of the expedition begins when the tents have been
set up, in the forest back of Lake St. John, and the green branches have
been broken for the woodland bed, and the fire has been lit under the
open sky, and, the livery of fashion being all discarded, I sit down at
a log table to eat supper with my lady Greygown. Then life seems simple
and amiable and well worth living. Then the uproar and confusion of the
world die away from us, and we hear only the steady murmur of the river
and the low voice of the wind in the tree-tops. Then time is long, and
the only art that is needful for its enjoyment is short and easy. Then
we taste true comfort, while we lodge with Mother Green at the Sign of
the Balsam Bough.

I.

UNDER THE WHITE BIRCHES.

Men may say what they will in praise of their houses, and grow eloquent
upon the merits of various styles of architecture, but, for our part, we
are agreed that there is nothing to be compared with a tent. It is the
most venerable and aristocratic form of human habitation. Abraham and
Sarah lived in it, and shared its hospitality with angels. It is exempt
from the base tyranny of the plumber, the paper-hanger, and the gas-man.
It is not immovably bound to one dull spot of earth by the chains of
a cellar and a system of water-pipes. It has a noble freedom of
locomotion. It follows the wishes of its inhabitants, and goes with
them, a travelling home, as the spirit moves them to explore the
wilderness. At their pleasure, new beds of wild flowers surround it,
new plantations of trees overshadow it, and new avenues of shining water
lead to its ever-open door. What the tent lacks in luxury it makes up
in liberty: or rather let us say that liberty itself is the greatest
luxury.

Another thing is worth remembering--a family which lives in a tent never
can have a skeleton in the closet.

But it must not be supposed that every spot in the woods is suitable for
a camp, or that a good tenting-ground can be chosen without knowledge
and