Outing

“ It accords well with the rippling twitter of the snow-birds, and completes the day’s attraction, or should do so. How tiresome our northern summers would be without a bit of winter, now and then, wherewith to contrast them. It is strange, but true, that when the occasional rambler takes an outing he must have a whole menagerie at his elbow or votes the woods in winter a dismal solitude. ”

“ Few are those among us whose outings cover a lifetime; and when the happy days of freedom come to us, let books be kept behind, and with untrammeled eyes and ears let us drink in the knowledge that comes to us at no other time. Summer is all too short a season for other occupation than enthusiastic sight-seeing and sound-hearing. ”

“ THE ROVER BOYS ON LAND AND SEA Or, The Crusoes of Seven Islands Full of strange and surprising adventures.
THE ROVER BOYS IN THE MOUNTAINS Or, A Hunt for Fame and Fortune The boys in the Adirondacks at a Winter camp.
THE ROVER BOYS ON THE GREAT LAKES Or, The Secret of the Island Cave A story of a remarkable Summer outing; full of fun. ”

“ I am not sure that there is one practical farmer in the whole United States who is obliged to witness in his household those sad dissensions which almost separate the families of professional men as to where and how they shall pass the summer. People of this class, which is a class with some measure of money, ease, and taste, are commonly of varying and decided minds, and I once knew a family of the sort whose combined ideal for their summer outing was summed up in the simple desire for society and solitude, mountain-air and sea-bathing. ”

“ Seldom, indeed, do we leave our own door—yet call on us, and ten to one you hear us in winter chirping like a cricket, or in summer like a grasshopper. We have the whole range of the house to ourselves, and many an Excursion make we on the Crutch. ”

“ At nightfall the uproar lessens, and as the evening wanes, the unaccustomed sounds diminish, though till midnight, ever and anon, the tired and sleepy citizens are startled from their dreams by whoops, hurrahs, snatches of songs, and outbursts of rude laughter ringing through the frosty air and mingling with the clattering of horses' feet and the whirring rumble of swift-revolving wheels, as some party of roystering blades, excited by deep potations, drive shouting homewards from the village inns. ”

“ After supper they spend an hour in some diversion, in summer in their gardens, and in winter in the halls where they eat, where they entertain each other either with music or discourse. They do not so much as know dice, or any such foolish and mischievous games. ”

“ But neither have I forgotten the long peaceful twilights of summer when we drifted down the river in our boat, listening to the small talk of the mother duck with her young, and to the chattering of uncounted thousands of starlings in the reeds where they had settled for the night, settling too, as was proper, the disputes of the day before they went to sleep. If only men were always so wise. ”

“ I who have packed my wanderer’s wallet with the gentle secrets of summer nights, of springtime hillsides, and wintry sunshine, I who have always tramped to the call of a lonely road, should I turn craven stay-at-home when life’s wild weather draws my feet hillward through grim slush and sleet? ”

“ We had thought the summer too long and too hot, we welcomed the crispness and vigor{111} of autumn, but to-day we walked abroad with joy in the warmth that again thrills us as with a fine touch of youth come back, and as little crinkles of heat shimmer upward from the brown fields we push forward, eager to bathe in it all once more.
All the out-door world seems dreamy with the same delight. ”

“ Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers. ”

“ Nothing can more sublimely impress the spirit of a lonely traveller than the passage of this wild ravine, on a day of cloud, and gloom, and rushing winds. In the sunny calm of summer, when the wild pink, springing from the crevices of the rocks, adorns the scene with something of gentleness, it is still of uncommon grandeur. ”

“ Stroll through any of its villages on a summer-evening and take note of the group of men and youths you may see lounging round the pump in awkward contortions of ease, or through the red-curtained windows of the public-house, smoking, drinking, gambling, breathing air morally and physically impure ”

“ So when, as now, a chance combination of circumstances brings them leisure to look about them, the forest and the world of out-of-doors comes to them with a freshness impossible for the city dweller to realise. ”

“ And so, dear brethren, I beseech you to remember that it depends on yourself whether departing shall be arrival, and exodus shall be entrance. One thing or other that last moment must be to us all—either a dragging us reluctant away from what we would fain cleave to, or a glad departure from a foreign land and entrance to our home. ”

“ The Summer was done; the book had been ten days out of Morning’s hand; the final rehearsals were engrossing and painful, and the letters from the hill-cabin, though buoyant, were not so frequent.... Service for men—service for men! The words seemed integrated into the life of the man. ”

“ Yet I depart from life, as from an inn, not as from a home; for nature has given us here a lodging for a sojourn, not a place of habitation. O glorious day, when I shall go to that divine company and assembly of souls, and when I shall depart from this crowd and tumult! ”

“ Long before autumn most of us must be back to the busy town. Business demands our work-day hours; and now, during the leisure of long winter evenings, with what delight one may recall vacation-days, reading outdoor books! ”

“ And then there was the inexhaustible interest of the travellers themselves. When night had fallen and the great Outside withdrew itself, she turned with eager eyes to the shifting world around her, a human world even more absorbing than the panorama of the hills. ”

“ Outside, in what was called the big world, things were going on with frantic hurry and change, but in here the leisured calm was huge, gigantic, so much so that the other dwindled into a kind of lost remoteness. ”

“ And when it is your holiday, and time is all your own, be warned! The lot of those few left among you who are forced to live alone—on the sea, with the sheep of the green hills, guarding the trim wildness of your woods, turning the lonely soil{144}—may for a moment seem desirable. ”

“ Nothing is done in house or field without your sanction. At your early call, this little busy hive begins to stir in the morning. At your mid-day invitation, the boys gather from the fields where they have been working; and the girls from the laundries and workrooms to the noon-day meal. At your evening summons, the doors are closed at night, and not a sound is heard afterwards in house or field until your steady voice wakens our little world again. ”

“ All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor the booting and tramping here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away?
What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day’s dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow’s while to peck at, on a heap of stones? ”

“ Sometimes we spent our winter afternoons of enforced leisure in long walks through country roads which lay empty to the eye for miles. They gave one a sense of loneliness which colored thought, not in any sentimental way, but in a manner very natural and real. ”

“ But the fortunate ticket-holder, when once beyond the hurly-burly outside, finds that an entrance to a different atmosphere has been attained. It is like leaving the famished, parched plain at the mountain’s foot and climbing up into the cool region, almost among the eternal snows. ”

“ Yet how can there be a vacation without mountains, or seashore, or the fields, or the forests—days out of doors? My ideal vacation would have to be spent in the open; and this book, the larger part of it, is the record of one of my summer vacations—the vacation of the summer of 1912. That was an ideal vacation, and along with my account of it I wish to give you some hints on how to make the most of your summer chance to tramp the fields and woods.
For the real lover of nature is a tramp ”

“ There are long vacations, but what she sees and experiences a-traveling is usually rendered to her readers. “Thus in the summer we spend weeks in the saddle in the mountains of the Far West, or fishing in Canada.... These outdoor summers were planned at first because there were four men and one woman in our party. Now, however, I love the open as men do.” ”

“ I will be silent as to the foolish compliments paid to the head of the family on his birthday, nor describe the monstrous circle which was formed in the parlour by the assembly of so many heterogeneous people, discoursing upon how the weather was about to change, and how the winter is generally colder than the summer. Let us come to the point: four lock struck, and we, the invited guests, found ourselves alone. ”

“ As we neared the valley it ceased raining, the clouds broke, and for a little while the sun shone brightly and sank slowly in the west just as we entered our hotel yard, the young people exclaiming to those who came out to greet us, ‘We have had a charming time,’ but I, with every article of clothing thoroughly soaked, and my body feeling as if I had been under a thrashing machine, parted with mule society most willingly. ”

“ The succession of incidents and places in your career is ever romantic. May you find what you need—white, sunny Winter hours, not too stove-heated nor too pork-fed, with a crisp dry air and a frequent leisure and no desperation of inanition. And may much good prose flow from it all. ”

“ It is near the main road; travellers, droves of cattle, the diligence, and bullock-carts pass in sight. Sometimes, at noon, I find a traveller resting in the shade, and if he is not sleeping we talk and he tells me the news of that great world my eyes have never seen. ”

“ The last look, the last word, the last smile, even the last shilling, have all a peculiarly melancholy import; but the last voyage, to one who has lived, as it were, on travelling—who has slept for weeks and months under the shadow of the forest trees, and dwelt among the wild romantic scenes of the wilderness—has a peculiar and thrilling interest. ”

“ When the fishermen have returned, and all have admired the day’s catch, and when supper is over, how pleasant as twilight is setting in to gather on the porches for intercourse, to recline in easy chair, or to swing lazily in hammock for rest. ”

“ As the whole company are now crowded into the little cabin, and the darkness is without, so that the days pass without much incident, except that all are crowded with heavy burdens upon mind and body, we will listen to a few of the yet untold stories of the earlier winter. ”

“ The men feel the effects of their journey, but are very content in their comfortable quarters. A pack of cards, grog at dinner, and the promise of a three days’ holiday, have made the decks happy with idleness and laughter. ”

“ When we first appeared in the gateway of an hotel, equipped for an excursion, the rush of men and animals was so great that we were forced to retreat until our servant and the porter whipped us a path through the yelling and braying mob. ”

“ So they sit cosily by the fire in their little cabins, drawn close together against the cold, and, as they turn to speak, see their own thoughts in each other's eyes, read their own words, before they speak them, on each other's lips. ”

“ It is good to escape for a time from the House of Rimmon—be it office or cutchery—and to go abroad under no more exacting master than personal inclination, and with no more definite plan of travel than has the horse, escaped from pasture, free upon the countryside. ”

“ A more joyous scene, adds the diarist, cannot be imagined than that afforded by those hill-sides and woods thronged with eager sportsmen, and resounding far and near with the notes of the horns, the halloes of the hunters, the barking of the dogs, and the voices of singing and rejoicing. ”

“ And the girl with whom almost everything in life had gone wrong came to think of Out There as the place where everything was right. It was the far country where there was no weariness nor loneliness, the land where one did not grow tired, where one never woke up in the morning too tired to get up, where no one went to bed at night too tired to go to sleep. ”

“ The afternoon visits and tea-parties at which matters of this importance are discussed, when fresh visitors keep dropping in, each with a fresh bundle of news, remind one somehow, perhaps by the fatuous excitement of the persons concerned, of the constant and aimless journeys to and fro which may be observed going on in a rabbit-warren. ”

“ We three wandered from one town to another, spreading our carpet wherever there was a fair or a cattle-market, going hungry in bad seasons, and in our luckier days attaching ourselves to some band of strolling posture-makers or comedians. ”

“ No frontier picture is more familiar or more pleasing than that of the farmer's boy sitting or lying on the floor during the long winter evening industriously tracing by firelight or by candlelight the proverb or quotation assigned him as an exercise in penmanship, or wrestling with the intricacies of least common denominators and highest common divisors. ”