“And yet,” said Spalding, “if you will look into the philosophy of the matter, you will see that this diversity of tastes, as you call it, is not so great after all; that is, that the origin of the impulse which sends some men away from society among the solitudes of the wilderness, and of that which holds others in constant communion with the busy scenes of life, is very nearly the same.  It is the love of adventure, of excitement, a restlessness for something new, a desire for change.  This impulse is controlled, shaped by circumstances of early life, by education and association; but the foundation of it at last is the thirst for excitement, the love of adventure.  One man wanders away into the wilderness in pursuit of it.  Another plunges into society in pursuit of the same thing.  These hardy men who are here with us, who were reared on the borders of civilization, enjoy the solitudes of their wilderness quite as much, and upon the same general theory, as we do the society to which we have been accustomed; and they plunge alone into the one with quite as much zest as we do into the other, in the pursuit of excitement.  Here is Cullen, now, who has spent more time alone in the wilderness than almost any other man outside of the trappers and hunters of the prairies of the West, I appeal to him if it is not rather a love of adventure than of nature which sends him on his solitary rambles in the forests?”

“May be the Judge is right,” replied Cullen, as he rubbed the shavings of plug tobacco in the palm of his left hand with the ball of his right, while he held his short black pipe between his teeth, preparatory to filling it, “may be the Judge is right, I rather think he is, and let me tell you I’ve met with some queer adventures, as you call them, in these woods too; some that I wouldn’t have gone out arter if I’d known what they were to’ve been afore I started.  I’ve been movin’ back from what you call civilization for five and twenty year, because I didn’t like to live where people were too thick, and where there was nothing but tame life around me.  I’ve a kind of liking for the deer and moose, and haven’t any ill will towards, now and then, a wolf or a painter.  I like a rifle better than I do the handles of a plow, and I’d rayther bring down a ten-pronger than to raise an acre of corn, and I don’t care who knows it.  There’s a place in the world for just such a man as I am yet, and will be till these old woods are gone.  Do you see that?” said he, rolling up his pantaloons to his knees, revealing a deep scar on both sides of the calf of his leg, as if it had been pierced by a bullet.  “And do you see that?” as he exhibited another deep scar above his knee.  “And that?” as he showed another on his arm, above the elbow.  “Wal, I reckon I had a time of it with the old buck that made them things on my under-pinin’, and on my corn-stealer, as they say out West.  Fifteen years ago I was over on Tupper’s Lake, shantyin’ on the high bank above the rocks, just