The true camper, like the poet, is born and not made. It is an instinct, a gift, a grace, to adapt oneself to the simple life of the woodlands, which is, however, not without its creature comforts. Lady campers may invite one, with traces of housewifely pride, to glance at the interior of their spotless tents; an interior little used save for sleep or for shelter in sudden storms. They take pride in the beds of springy balsam well covered by blankets; and the little tables with a few books and a chair or two. A bed of balsam boughs; a breakfast of trout freshly caught in the lake, with coffee made over the camp fire, combined with youth and health and keen interest in the world in general, and what more could one ask? And if one is not acclimated to the system of domestic life as ordered by the livers in the open air, then he may enjoy in the Highland Inn all the regulation viands and appointments of the highest civilisation, with his breakfast of grape-fruit, cereals, delicious coffee not made over a camp fire; trout, hot cakes, and the wonderful maple syrup of the land of the Maple Leaf. With these he will have his matutinal paper, with the latest news of the universe, that has come up from Toronto at night, and for the day before him relays of attractions, each more delightful than the other, beckon to him.
In the vast woodlands one may encounter many happy couples strolling, not invariably side by side, for there is no surplus space beyond the width required for the single pedestrian. As they fare forth in true Indian file, He calls to Her, "Come on"; or occasionally, by way of special conversational brilliancy, he exclaims in a friendly tone, "Are you there?" They are possibly making their way over a portage. The guide has the canoe, reversed, on his head. As they wind along intricate paths, He goes in advance, and She faithfully follows. There is all the charm of conversational entertainment when He looks sideways over his shoulder and exclaims, "Getting on all right?" She would be ashamed to confess she was not! When their canoe-trip was projected that morning She, who did not know a canoe from a constellation, was quite in rapture. As a tenderfoot, as yet unprofited by the proximity of the wilderness, She descended from her bower equipped with a parasol for the sun, an umbrella for possible rain, a handbag duly supplied with pencil, notebook, violet water, and various feminine conveniences; a volume of her favourite poet in her hand that He may read aloud to her, and a novel for her own private delectation, in case He should be oblivious of poetic ecstasies and like a mere man prefer to smoke and ... dream. But He, who has seen the wilderness before in the course of his august career, and to whom canoeing is no mystery, regards Her with unaccustomed { 112} severities and austerities. "You can't take those things," he laconically observes, with one finger designating her numerous impedimenta; "upset the canoe." Poet and novelist, to say nothing of lace-trimmed parasol, are banished; and She receives the first intimation of an idea that there is some necessity of equilibrium connected with canoeing.