Now Dick is a good, active, able-bodied boy, possessed of average
intelligence and rather more than average zeal. He even had theory of a
sort, for he had read various "Boy Campers, or the Trapper's Guide,"
"How to Camp Out," "The Science of Woodcraft," and other able works. He
certainly had ideas enough and confidence enough. I sat down on a log.

At the end of three hours' flusteration, heat, worry, and good hard
work, he had accomplished the following results: A tent, very saggy,
very askew, covered a four-sided area--it was not a rectangle--of very
bumpy ground. A hodge-podge bonfire, in the centre of which an
inaccessible coffee-pot toppled menacingly, alternately threatened to
ignite the entire surrounding forest or to go out altogether through
lack of fuel. Personal belongings strewed the ground near the fire, and
provisions cumbered the entrance to the tent. Dick was anxiously mixing
batter for the cakes, attempting to stir a pot of rice often enough to
prevent it from burning, and trying to rustle sufficient dry wood to
keep the fire going. This diversity of interests certainly made him sit
up and pay attention. At each instant he had to desert his flour-sack
to rescue the coffee-pot, or to shift the kettle, or to dab hastily at
the rice, or to stamp out the small brush, or to pile on more dry
twigs. His movements were not graceful. They raised a scurry of dry
bark, ashes, wood dust, twigs, leaves, and pine needles, a certain
proportion of which found their way into the coffee, the rice, and the
sticky batter, while the smaller articles of personal belonging,
hastily dumped from the duffel-bag, gradually disappeared from view in
the manner of Pompeii and ancient Vesuvius. Dick burned his fingers and
stumbled about and swore, and looked so comically-pathetically
red-faced through the smoke that I, seated on the log, at the same time
laughed and pitied. And in the end, when he needed a continuous steady