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nadian-French blood mingles in at least | brown hackle or white will quickest tempt equal proportions with American. He is a trout to rise; so long, in short, as he Latin in name, often in speech, but un- knows what is expected of him to know, adulterated Yankee in nature. You find it would be small and pedantic in the exJames, John, and Henry flanked by such treme to express surprise over the fact

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surnames as St. Germain, Laboutie, La | that the St. Regis guide is unable to read Fontaine. Your faith in philology is shaken by the discovery that Mitchell Sweeney is a Frenchman, and that Mrs. Stephen Otis can not speak English. The guide is born, not made. Like the barber, he serves no apprenticeship. He rolls, so to speak, out of his log-cradle into a pair of top-boots, discards the bottle for a pipe, possesses himself of a boat and a jackknife, and becomes forthwith a full-fledged, experienced guide. So long as he possesses that available knowledge which enables him to determine by what run-way, to what water, the houndhunted stag will make his dash for life; so long as he can find his way through this vast and bewildering wilderness, shoot a rifle with destructive accuracy, tell you by a look at the sky whether a

or write. But the pedant could hardly be said to assert itself in the person who evinces honest wonder when he first learns that this robust backwoodsman not only does not know his alphabet, but has never been out of the confines of the woods, has never so much as seen a railway track, or a steam-engine, or a brick building, or a circus, or a printing - press, or a policeman, or an oyster, or a Pinafore company. This wilderness must be set down as a spot which puts greatness to a terrible test, and extinguishes notoriety with a beautiful simplicity. The Vice-President of the United States secures his claim to recognition not because of the office he holds, but because he lives in Malone. The wide world over, there certainly could be found no better place in which to store

away a college Sophomore or a rural Congressman. The small vanities and pretensions of a man will be taken out of him here with much the same jerky suddenness that a trout is taken out of the

water.

66

It will be observed that throughout this narrative the Reporter has made the wilderness experiment hinge largely upon 'Paul" Smith's hotel. He could not well do otherwise, since "Paul's" is the sun which has warmed into being that diminutive planetary system of guides, farmhouses, hotels, post-offices, and telegraph wires which make up, collectively, St. Regis civilization. The invalid will naturally make this famous backwoods tavern his objective point in setting out for the wilderness. In fact, without the existence of "Paul" Smith's, the experiment could not be made at all. The permanent camp turns to the hotel for its supplies, which otherwise could be obtained, if at all, only at unreasonable outlay of time and money. It is not to eulogize a public-house that the Reporter points out this Adirondack inn, but it is to explain how the comforts and luxuries of life become possible in the very heart of the vast wilderness. Moreover, eulogy of "Paul" Smith's would be but fulsome, at best. It is known wherever the Adirondacks are known. It is what a hotel should be, and what the invalid, of all others, appreciates. A word with regard to the quotation marks. A quarter of a century ago, when "Paul" penetrated to the then wildly romantic St. Regis Lake, he carried with him the alliterative prenomen of Apollos Austin. This was musical, semi-poetic, and semi-classic; but for practical purposes in the backwoods a name, unlike a gun, doesn't want to be double-barrelled. Apollos Austin passed rapidly through the transition stages of contraction until it became simply "Pol." That did well enough in the matter of brevity, but it had a suspicious feminine or ornithological ring to it, which led the people to transform it into the plain Christian "Paul." And, the apostle of genial hospitality, enterprise, and goodness, he has remained "Paul" ever since.

It remains only to consider the wilderness experiment with regard to its necessary expenses.

Man is presumed to value his life beyond any worldly possession. To the hard alternative of surrendering a remu

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and the more certain the belief that the impossible trip would restore him to health and strength, the more bitter his cup as he reflects on the utter inability of any man to reach the moon. But even the clerk can reach this wilderness, and pitch his tent, and try the experiment which may give him a new lease of life.

From his personal experience and the opportunities afforded him for studying the subject, the Reporter is convinced that a person can journey to the St. Regis country, spend a year there, give the experiment a fair trial, and all for a smaller sum than the same person would necessarily spend if he remained at home. If this should seem to lack definiteness, let its meaning be illustrated thus: Suppose the patient to be actually poor-so poor that every dime as well as dollar must be looked after. Suppose him to be a man with a thrifty, competent wife. It costs

him in New York city, wholly apart from any extraordinary expenditures growing out of his illness, twelve dollars a week to live. Now, then, he can pay the cost of the journey, buy a good tent, and fit up a camp so that it shall be in all respects comfortable, spend the winter months in a hospitable farm-house, live on beef, mutton, venison, partridges, chickens, speckled trout, fresh eggs, pure milk, sweet butter, and a variety of vegetables, recover his health, and his entire outlay for the year need not exceed the twelve dollars a week which he would have spent at home.

If the foregoing statement strikes the reader as in any way Munchausenish, let him look at this table, which represents the outlay of two persons, who have given the experiment a trial on a more extravagant basis than would be necessary to fulfill all its essential conditions:

A YEAR'S EXPENSES IN THE WILDERNESS. Camp-life Period-Five Months.

Canvas tent and camp equipments

Labor and buildings

Food and all necessary expenses (per

House-life Period-Seven Months.

week, $9)...

Guide for season

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$100

50

180

150 $480

$308 84 100 492

$972

Here, as will be observed, the average weekly expenditure reaches $18 50; but, as has been explained, this sum presumes many luxuries which could be omitted without lessening in the slightest degree

the experimenter's chances of recovery. For example, the cost of the camp need not exceed $50; the domestic work could be done by a capable woman instead of a "guide," which would save $100 through the season, while the winter expenses could be reduced one-third as compared with the estimate given, and that, too, without subjecting the patient to any privation. In a word, the wilderness is poverty's paradise. You can rent a house here, with two or three acres of ground, for $2 per month. You can buy mutton, or venison, or beef, for ten cents a pound; partridges and chickens, for twenty-five cents apiece; butter, for fifteen cents; speckled trout, for five cents. You can get your wood, all sawed and split, for $1 a cord, and a horse to use through the winter for his keeping. Even the $2 50 per day charged for board at "Paul" Smith's is reasonable when the comforts there provided are kept in mind; and for those seeking a cheaper hotel, the Rainbow House, kept by James M. Wardner, furnishes home-like accommodations for $1 50 per day.

The story of Camp Lou would have little significance were it an isolated instance; but already the wilderness experiment has been sufficiently tested to demonstrate its wonderful curative powers in many cases of pulmonary disease. Here, within reach of thousands who could never hope to journey to far-away places, nature provides a sanitarium, destined, in the Reporter's belief, to become the future Mecca for consumptive patients.

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"Who may not be a fole, gyf that he love?"-Chaucer.

I.

THERE'S a mighty power o' defference betwixt a man and a boy," said old Mr. Billy Beazley one day.

And I will proceed, after a brief preliminary history, to relate some of the occurrences that led to the remark.

self that because a man was old, he need not become decrepit and morose before it was actually necessary, and thus, for the few years left, forego all enjoyment of his being. So he mildly cheered his aged relative in his juvenilities, and even sometimes joked him about the girls.

"Them's the ones, Dick, for me. Ef any female-ef, you know, Dick, and ef's the longest letter in the book-but ef any female ever comes here to take the head o' my table, and carry my smoke-'ouse keys, it's got to be a pullet. Other people may take the hens. Ef I take any—ef, you mind, Dick--it's got to be a pullet."

Yet, so far from such talk being serious, Dick would have thought as soon of encouraging, with the expectation of convalescence, or having him encourage himself, one who was just drawing his last gasp. And, besides, his uncle had always professed to be quite satisfied with what family he already had, and declared himself not to be a marrying man. As for himself, Dick would have been glad to be permitted to ask any gentleman who should doubt his being a full man, where he expected to find one.

Mr. Bob Beazley and his nephew Dick, since the death of Lemuel, the latter's father, ten years before, had been keeping bachelors' hall together on the hill, south side of Beaver Dam Creek. Down to a certain period, they had been most intimate friends and lovers. Lemuel had made his brother Bob testamentary guardian of this his only child, to whom he had bequeathed a property of about three thousand dollars-quite handsome for those times. The guardian had been keeping his ward, managing his estate, boarding, clothing, and sending him to the Dukesborough school, without charge, during all these years. Dick was now seventeen years old, and a man in size and consciousness. His uncle Bob was forty-three, tall, stout, full of health, and of remarkable juvenility of body and spirit. They hunted together, fished together, rode to church together, and were as intimate as twin brothers newly born. It had been rather so always, but particularly of late, that each appeared to be reaching for what the other had, and himself had not, the one back, the other forth-Mr. Bob for youth, and Dick for age. By the time whereof I am writing, both seemed to have succeeded, and-perhaps excepting that Dick might have appeared, on account of his ways, the elder of the two-may be said to have approximated equality. The sentiments, however, which each entertained of the other in this respect were widely apart, and were destined, through circumstances soon hereinafter recounted, to become more so. Dick Beazley regarded a man of forty-three who was already considerably gray-headed, notwithstanding the absence of any appearance of decline in vigor, as rapidly verging upon old age. Yet such was his devotion to his uncle that he encouraged him in continuing to attend little parties of young people in the neigh-south from Dukesborough. "Them boys borhood, and even joining occasionally in the dance-a pastime that Dick himself was beginning to let lapse with the lapse of his own youth. Dick argued with him

On the other hand, Mr. Bob looked upon his nephew as extremely young, growing satisfactorily, indeed, and with favorable chances of being a man after some years, if no accident should hinder. Sometimes, just for his fun, he would joke Dick about the old maids and widows. As for Dick's marrying, under years and years, he would have expected as soon a new-born baby to get out of his cradle, cut all his teeth instantly, and go to hopping and jumping about the yard. So each in his way had his harmless pleasantries, and it was interesting to notice both sometimes at parties as they laughed affectionately at each other when Dick would be bucking up, as they called it, to the overgrown and Mr. Bob to the undergrown girls.

Old Mr. Billy Beazley, Mr. Bob's elder brother by twenty years, used to speak of these two as "them boys-them twin boys." He lived at the cross-roads, the justice's court ground, three miles further

was jes' like twin brothers ontwill lately, and nothin' but death or wimming could a parted 'em; and of the two, I sometimes think wimming is the beaterest. They

who, having tried the married life, yet, without looking back to it with hostility, for she acknowledged to having had a good husband and one angel child, yet—well, it was a vain world, and a world of disappointments, in which more people now married than did well afterward, and peo

ain't nary one of them boys that's scarce- | had the looks and the conversation of one ly fitten too git married. Because Bob, though he ain't by no means a ole man, have growed too sot in his ways for sich foolishness, and Dick's nothin' but a child, you may say, ef he is so big in size. But it ain't no use talkin' to 'em, because when wimming git far'ly in on a fellow, be he young or be he old, he can persuade his-ple could never know how soon from the self that he's whatsomever he wants to be; Bob, thinkin' now, I suppose, that he's jes' a-cuttin' his wisdom-tooth, and Dick believin' he's as old as Methoosalum. There's a power, a mighty power, of defference betwixt a man and a boy. But when wimming comes in, they can wallop 'em up together so a body can't tell, and especially they can't tell theirselves, t'other from which. But them boys is aller or a bachelor (though she had too much right at the bottom, and ef they can't both git satisfied, I hopes they can git riconciled arfter a while."

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Just over Beaver Dam, on the side of the last hill you ascended from the south, before entering Dukesborough, a little removed on the right from the road, there dwelt, in a snug house, on a snugger farm, the snuggest of widows. Mrs. Brinkly was well-to-do, comely, and aged twentynine. Her only child having died soon after its father, three years before, she had lately persuaded Miss Lottie Brinkly, her husband's and her own cousin, to take her abode with her. Lottie was a brunette (her cousin being a blonde), pretty, poor, industrious, and modest, and although but fifteen, yet fully grown in size, andwell, you may say-ready to be approached upon the subject of a final life settlement by a person of the opposite sex who might propose satisfactory terms, and be regarded by herself as competent to fulfill them. Her cousin thus far had behaved with the decorum suited to her lonely condition, and though fallen, after sufficient lapse of time, into the habit of the neighborhood in attending and giving little parties, was spoken of frequently as a widow who seemed to care little for the society either of widowers or bachelors. Mrs. Brinkly

wedding-room they might have to go to the grave-yard. Let young people, Mrs. Brinkly argued, have their day. It will not be long before the night will "cometh" (sometimes employing Scriptural phrase), and as for herself, she meant to devote the rest of her life to young people.

"No," she would say, when they would sometimes mention the name of a widow

good sense to become angry)—“no, indeed. Let young people have their day. I've had mine; let them have theirs. Neither do I envy them. This life is a riddle, and it's a lottery, and it's-but who can say what it is, and what it isn't?"

So Mrs. Brinkly attended little parties, and gave them, and made the best cake. and the best syllabub in all that region; and though she treated the widowers and bachelors with perfect politeness everywhere, and in her own house with perfect cordiality, yet her most agreeable occupation, after thorough attention to her own domestic concerns, was to bring young people together, and make good times for them.

Now it came to pass about a year, or such a matter, after the coming of Miss Lottie, that people remarked freely on the partially renewing youth of one and the intensely augmented agedness of the other of the Beazley twins on the other side of the creek. Mr. Bob did not go so far as actually to take the unnecessary expense of buying a new fur hat, but with a brush and a silk handkerchief he put on the old one a smoothness and a gloss that made some small boys declare, and profess to be willing to bet, that it was new. As for Dick, he bought two new hats (both charged to Uncle Bob)-one for parties, and one for Sundays. People did not talk about the extravagance, for even if Dick's property could not stand it, his uncle's could; and the question was, What difference did it make? Then Dick was so sober and sedate in his manners that people did not have the heart to find any fault with whatever he did. As for

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