Our stay at Duluth was protracted many days.  One finds himself at home in this new Western city, and there are a thousand ways in which to amuse yourself.  If you are disposed for a walk, there are any number of delightful woodpaths leading to famous bits of beach where you may sit and dream the livelong day without fear of interruption or notice.  If you would try camping-out, there are guides and canoes right at your hand, and the choice of scores of beautiful and delightful spots within easy reach of your hotel or along the shore of the lake and its numerous beautiful islands, or as far away into the forest as you care to penetrate.  Lastly, if piscatorially inclined, here is a boathouse with every kind of boat from the steam-yacht down to the birch canoe, and there is the lake, full of “lakers,” sturgeon, whitefish, and speckled trout, some of the latter weighing from thirty to forty pounds apiece,—­a condition of things alike satisfactory and tempting to every owner of a rod and line.

The guides, of whom there are large numbers to be found at Duluth, as indeed at all of the northern border towns, are a class of men too interesting and peculiar to be passed over without more than a cursory notice.  These men are mostly French-Canadians and Indians, with now and then a native, and for hardihood, skill, and reliability, cannot be surpassed by any other similar class of men the world over.  They are usually men of many parts, can act equally well as guide, boatman, baggage-carrier, purveyor, and cook.  They are respectful and chivalrous:  no woman, be she old or young, fair or faded, fails to receive the most polite and courteous treatment at their hands, and with these qualities they possess a manly independence that is as far removed from servility as forwardness.  Some of these men are strikingly handsome, with shapely statuesque figures that recall the Antinous and the Apollo Belvidere.  Their life is necessarily a hard one, exposed as they are to all sorts of weather and the dangers incidental to their profession.  At a comparatively early age they break down, and extended excursions are left to the younger and more active members of the fraternity.

Camping-out, provided the weather is reasonably agreeable, is one of the most delightful and healthful ways to spend vacation.  It is a sort of woodman’s or frontier life.  It means living in a tent, sleeping on boughs or leaves, cooking your own meals, washing your own dishes and clothes perhaps, getting up your own fuel, making your own fire, and foraging for your own provender.  It means activity, variety, novelty, and fun alive; and the more you have of it the more you like it; and the longer you stay the less willing you are to give it up.  There is a freedom in it that you do not get elsewhere.  All the stiff formalties of conventional life are put aside:  you are left free to enjoy yourself as you choose.  All in all, it is the very best way we know to enjoy a “glorious vacation.”