Whom shall one take with him when he goes a-courting Nature? This
is always a vital question. There are persons who will stand
between you and that which you seek: they obtrude themselves; they
monopolize your attention; they blunt your sense of the shy, half-
revealed intelligences about you. I want for companion a dog or a
boy, or a person who has the virtues of dogs and boys,--
transparency, good-nature, curiosity, open sense, and a nameless
quality that is akin to trees and growths and the inarticulate
forces of nature. With him you are alone, and yet have company; you
are free; you feel no disturbing element; the influences of nature
stream through him and around him; he is a good conductor of the
subtle fluid. The quality or qualification I refer to belongs to
most persons who spend their lives in the open air,--to soldiers,
hunters, fishers, laborers, and to artists and poets of the right
sort. How full of it, to choose an illustrious example, was such a
man as Walter Scott!

But no such person came in answer to my prayer, so I set out alone.

It was fit that I put my boat into the water at Arkville, but it
may seem a little incongruous that I should launch her into Dry
Brook; yet Dry Brook is here a fine large trout stream, and I soon
found its waters were wet enough for all practical purposes. The
Delaware is only one mile distant, and I chose this as the easiest
road from the station to it. A young farmer helped me carry the
boat to the water, but did not stay to see me off; only some calves
feeding alongshore witnessed my embarkation. It would have been a
godsend to boys, but there were no boys about. I stuck on a rift
before I had gone ten yards, and saw with misgiving the paint
transferred from the bottom of my little scow to the tops of the