who is going to town.
I have been on the round-up for a fortnight, and really
enjoy the work greatly; in fact I am having a most pleasant
summer, though I miss all of you very, very much. We
breakfast at three and work from sixteen to eighteen hours a
day counting night-guard; so I get pretty sleepy; but I feel
as strong as a bear. I took along Tolstoy's "La Guerre et La
Paix" which Madame de Mores had lent me; but I have had
little chance to read it as yet. I am very fond of Tolstoy.

In "The Wilderness Hunter" Roosevelt, two or three years later, told
of that "very pleasant summer" of 1886.

I was much at the ranch, where I had a good deal of writing
to do; but every week or two I left, to ride among the line
camps, or spend a few days on any round-up which happened to
be in the neighborhood.

These days of vigorous work among the cattle were themselves
full of pleasure. At dawn we were in the saddle, the morning
air cool in our faces; the red sunrise saw us loping across
the grassy reaches of prairie land, or climbing in single
file among the rugged buttes. All forenoon we spent riding
the long circle with the cowpunchers of the round-up; in the
afternoon we worked the herd, cutting the cattle, with much
breakneck galloping and dextrous halting and wheeling. Then
came the excitement and hard labor of roping, throwing, and
branding the wild and vigorous range calves; in a corral, if
one was handy, otherwise in a ring of horsemen. Soon after
nightfall we lay down, in a log hut or tent, if at a line
camp; under the open sky, if with the round-up wagon.

After ten days or so of such work, in which every man had to
do his full share,--for laggards and idlers, no matter who,
get no mercy in the real and healthy democracy of the
round-up,--I would go back to the ranch to turn to my books
with added zest for a fortnight. Yet even during these weeks
at the ranch there was some outdoor work; for I was breaking
two or three colts. I took my time, breaking them gradually
and gently, not, after the usual cowboy fashion, in a hurry,
by sheer main strength and rough riding, with the attendant
danger to the limbs of the man and very probable ruin to
the manners of the horse. We rose early; each morning I
stood on the low-roofed veranda, looking