many unrelated and unexpected tasks. He is disposed to blaze his
own trail. He has a touch of prodigality, and, withal, a knack of
keeping his tent or his affairs in better order than they seem.
Above all, he has been ever ready to break camp when he feels the
impulse to wander. He likes to be "foot-loose." If he does not
build his roads as solidly as the Roman roads were built, nor his
houses like the English houses, it is because he feels that he is
here today and gone tomorrow. If he has squandered the physical
resources of his neighborhood, cutting the forests recklessly,
exhausting the soil, surrendering water power and minerals into a
few far-clutching fingers, he has done it because he expects,
like Voltaire's Signor Pococurante, "to have a new garden
tomorrow, built on a nobler plan." When New York State grew too
crowded for Cooper's Leather-Stocking, he shouldered his pack,
whistled to his dog, glanced at the sun, and struck a bee-line
for the Mississippi. Nothing could be more typical of the first
three hundred years of American history.

The traits of the pioneer have thus been the characteristic
traits of the American in action. The memories of successive
generations have tended to stress these qualities to the neglect
of others. Everyone who has enjoyed the free life of the woods
will confess that his own judgment upon his casual summer
associates turns, quite naturally and almost exclusively, upon
their characteristics as woodsmen. Out of the woods, these
gentlemen may be more or less admirable divines, pedants, men of
affairs; but the verdict of their companions in the forest is
based chiefly upon the single question of their adaptability to
the environment of the camp. Are they quick of eye and foot,
skillful with rod and gun, cheerful on rainy days, ready to do a