I have visited portions of this wilderness at least once every summer
for the last ten years, and I have never yet been disappointed with my
fortnight's sport, or failed to meet with a degree of success which
abundantly satisfied me, at least. I have generally gone into the
woods weakened in body and depressed in mind. I have always come out
of them with renewed health and strength, a perfect digestion, and a
buoyant and cheerful spirit.

For myself, I have come to regard these mountains, these lakes and
streams, these old forests, and all this wild region, as my settled
summer resort, instead of the discomforts, the jam, the excitement,
and the unrest of the watering-places or the sea shore. I visit them
for their calm seclusion, their pure air, their natural cheerfulness,
their transcendent beauty, their brilliant mornings, their glorious
sunsets, their quiet and repose. I visit them too, because when among
them, I can take off the armor which one is compelled to wear, and
remove the watch which one must set over himself, in the crowded
thoroughfares of life; because I can whistle, sing, shout, hurrah and
be jolly, without exciting the ridicule or provoking the contempt of
the world. In short, because I can go back to the days of old, and
think, and act, and feel like "a boy again."



CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
A Great Institution

CHAPTER II.