say, and you get to wondering about that,
too. And if you are in a tent and it rains and the tent don't leak, that
rain is a kind of a nice thing to listen to itself. But if you can see
the stars you get to wondering more'n ever. They come out and they is
so many of them and they are so fur away, and yet they are so kind o'
friendly-like, too, if you happen to be feeling purty good. But if you
ain't feeling purty good, jest lay there and look at them stars long
enough; and then mebby you'll see it don't make no difference whether
you're feeling good or not, fur they got a way o' making your private
troubles look mighty small. And you get to wondering why that is, too,
fur they ain't human; and it don't stand to reason you orter pay no
attention to them, one way nor the other. They is jest there, like trees
and cricks and hills. But I have often noticed that the things that is
jest there has got a way of seeming more friendly than the things that
has been built and put there. You can look at a big iron bridge or a
grain elevator or a canal all day long, and if you're feeling blue it
don't help you none. It was jest put there. Or a hay stack is the same
way. But you go and lazy around in the grass when you're down on your
luck and kind o' make remarks to a crick or a big, old walnut tree, and
before long it gets you to feeling like it didn't make no difference
how you felt, anyhow; fur you don't amount to nothing by the side of
something that was always there. You get to thinking how the hull world
itself was always here, and you sort o' see they ain't nothing important
enough about yourself to worry about, and presently you will go to
sleep and forget it. The doctor says to me one time them stars ain't
any different from this world, and this is one of them. Which is a fool
idea, as any one can see. He had a lot of queer ideas like that, Doctor
Kirby had. But they ain't nothing like sleeping out of doors nights to
make you wonder the kind of wonderings you never will get any answer to.

Well, I never cared so much fur houses after them days. They was bully
times, them was. And I was kind of proud of being with a show, too.
Many's the time I have went down the street in that there Injun suit,
and seen how the young fellers would of give all they owned to be me.
And every now and then you would hear one say when you went past:

"Huh, I know him! That's one of them show fellers!"

One afternoon we pitches our tent right on