and the morning pot be
made to boil.

They were clad in oilskins, and the drapery of Charles deserves special
attention. It is likely that its original color had been a flaunt of
yellow, and that it had been bedizened with certain buttonholes and hems
and selvages and things, such as adorn garments in a general way of
whatever nature or sex. That must have been a long time ago. It is
improbable that the oldest living inhabitant would be able to testify
concerning these items.

Observing him thoughtfully as he bent over the wet ashes and skillfully
cut and split and presently brought to flame the little heap of wood he
had garnered, there grew upon me a realization of the vast service that
suit of oilskins must have rendered to its owners--of the countless
storms that had beaten upon it; of the untold fires that had been
kindled under its protection; of the dark, wild nights when it had
served in fording torrents and in clambering over slippery rocks, indeed
of all the ages of wear and tear that had eaten into its seams and
selvages and hues since the day when Noah first brought it out of the
Ark and started it down through the several generations which had ended
with our faithful Charles, the Strong.

I suppose this is just one of those profitless reflections which is
likely to come along when one is still tangled up in a sleeping-bag,
watching the tiny flame that grows a little brighter and bigger each
moment and forces at last a glow of comfort into the tent until the
day, after all, seems worth beginning, though the impulse to begin it is
likely to have diminished. I have known men, awake for a long time, who
have gone on to sleep during just such morning speculations, when the
flames grew bright and brighter and crackled up through the little heap
of dry branches and sent that glow of luxury into the tent. I remember
seeing our guide adjust a stick at an angle above the fire, whereby to
suspend a kettle, and men, suddenly, of being startled from somewhere--I
was at the club, I think, in the midst of a game of pool--by a wild
whoop and the spectacle of Eddie, standing upright in the little runway
between our beds, howling that the proper moment for bathing had
arrived, and kicking up what seemed to me a great and unnecessary stir.

[Illustration: "Not to take the morning dip ... was to manifest a sad
lack of the true camping spirit."]

The idea of bathing on such a morning and in that primitive costume had
not