imate even nearer
perfection--though not so much advertised--than is that of winter. Here
the populace stays in the big winter hotels at reduced rates, or rents
itself cottages, or lives in one or the other of the unique tent cities.
It is gregarious and noisy, and healthy and hearty, and full of
phonographs and a desire to live in bathing suits. Another, and smaller
contingent, turns to the Sierras.

We have here nothing to do with those who attend the resorts such as
Tahoe or Klamath; nor yet with that much smaller contingent of hardy and
adventurous spirits who, with pack-mule and saddle, lose themselves in
the wonderful labyrinth of granite and snow, of canon and peak, of
forest and stream that makes up the High Sierras. But rather let us
confine ourselves to the great middle class, the class that has not the
wealth nor the desire for resort hotels, nor the skill nor the equipment
to explore a wilderness. These people hitch up the farm team, or the
grocer's cart, or the family horse, pile in their bedding and their
simple cooking utensils, whistle to the dog, and climb up out of the
scorching inferno to the coolness of the pines.

They have few but definite needs. They must have company, water, and the
proximity of a store where they can buy things to eat. If there is
fishing, so much the better. At any rate there is plenty of material for
bonfires. And since other stores are practically unknown above the
six-thousand-foot winter limit of habitability, it follows that each
lumber-mill is a magnet that attracts its own community of these
visitors to the out of doors.

As early as the beginning of July the first outfit drifted in. Below the
mill a half-mile there happened to be a small, round lake with meadows
at the upper and lower ends. By the middle of the month two hundred
people were camped there. Each constructed his abiding place according
to his needs and ideas, and promptly erected a sign naming it. The
names were facetiously intended. The community was out for a good time,
and it had it. Phonographs, concertinas, and even a tiny transportable
organ appeared. The men dressed in loose rough clothes; the women wore
sun-bonnets; the girls inclined to bandana handkerchiefs, rough-rider
skirts and leggings, cowboy hats caught up at the sides, fringed
gauntlet gloves. They were a good-natured, kindly lot, and Bob liked
nothing better than to stroll down to the Lake in the twilight. There he
found the arrangement