THE MISERIES OF CAMPING OUT.

My dear cousin Laura:  So you are thinking about camping out, and want my opinion as to whether the spot we chose for our trout-fishing in June is a suitable place for ladies to go?  I should give a decided negative.  My brother takes his wife and his sister usually, although he fortunately left them at home last time.  I think they must have to “make believe” a good deal to think it fun.  I am certain that had they been with us they would have been forced to exercise their largest powers of imagination.  We set out in fine weather, but entered the woods in a driving snowstorm, and enjoyed a forty-six-mile drive over a road that has, I must say this for it, not been known to be so bad for years.  We came back in a pelting rain.  We made our camp in a snowstorm, and the wood was wet and would not burn, and our tent was damp and would not dry.  We fished in a boat on the lake, swept by cold winds until we were chilled to the bone and our hands were so stiff we could not hold the rods.  My brother had a “chill” the first night in camp.  I had indigestion from eating things fried in pork fat from the first meal until I got a civilized repast at Frank’s house in New York.  I was bounced sore.  My nose was peeled by sun and cold.  My lips were decorated by three large cold-sores.  My hands bled constantly from a combination of chap and sunburn.  I made up my mind if I ever got safely out of those woods it would be several years at least before I could be persuaded to enter them again.  The scenery is lovely, but one cannot enjoy it.  The fishing is good, but it is hard work, and my own opinion is that there is altogether “too much pork for a shilling” in the whole business.  Talk about being “ten miles from a lemon”!  Try forty-six miles from a lemon over a corduroy road.  At first we had cold weather, hence no black flies or mosquitos.  When warm weather came on again we had both of them, and our experience was that the snowstorm was preferable.  The black flies made the day unendurable, and the mosquitos made the night as well as the day a wasting misery.  We had them everywhere—­in the hut, in the tent, at the table, on the lake, in the woods.  No smudge or lotion discourages them; oil of tar is their delight, camphor they revel in; buzzing, singing, biting continually are their pastime.  They are a galling curse—­a nuisance which no words can describe.  A lady might go through all this if she had perfect health and the endurance under punishment of a prize-fighter.  Your party may travel all those weary miles and strike a fortunate week of pleasant weather, but you may, and more likely will, have a week when it will rain dismally straight through without stopping.  We found, on looking up the statistics, that in an average season out of every twenty-two days eighteen will always be stormy, lowering and dismal.  No, don’t camp out unless you can make up your mind beforehand