It is better to sleep off the ground if you can, especially if you are rheumatic.  For this purpose build some sort of a platform ten inches or more high, that will do for a seat in daytime.  You can make a sort of spring bottom affair if you can find the poles for it, and have a little ingenuity and patience; or you can more quickly drive four large stakes, and nail a framework to them, to which you can nail boards or barrel-staves.[9] All this kind of work must be strong, or you can have no rough-and-tumble sport on it.  We used to see in the army sometimes, a mattress with a bottom of rubber cloth, and a top of heavy drilling, with rather more cotton quilted[10] between them than is put into a thick comforter.  Such a mattress is a fine thing to carry in a wagon when you are on the march; but you can make a softer bed than this if you are in a permanent camp.

SLEEPING.

“Turn in” early, so as to be up with the sun.  You may be tempted to sleep in your clothes; but if you wish to know what luxury is, take them off as you do at home, and sleep in a sheet, having first taken a bath, or at least washed the feet and limbs.  Not many care to do this, particularly if the evening air is chilly; but it is a comfort of no mean order.

If you are short of bedclothes, as when on the march, you can place over you the clothes you take off (see p. 19); but in that case it is still more necessary to have a good bed underneath.

You will always do well to cover the clothes you have taken off, or they will be quite damp in the morning.

See that you have plenty of air to breathe.  It is not best to have a draught of air sweeping through the tent, but let a plenty of it come in at the feet of the sleeper or top of the tent.

A hammock is a good thing to have in a permanent camp, but do not try to swing it between two tent-poles:  it needs a firmer support.

Stretch a clothes-line somewhere on your camp-ground, where neither you nor your visitors will run into it in the dark.

If your camp is where many visitors will come by carriage, you will find that it will pay you for your trouble to provide a hitching-post where the horses can stand safely.  Fastening to guy-lines and tent-poles is dangerous.

SINKS.

In a permanent camp you must be careful to deposit all refuse from the kitchen and table in a hole in the ground:  otherwise your camp will be infested with flies, and the air will become polluted.  These sink-holes may be small, and dug every day; or large, and partly filled every day or oftener by throwing earth over the deposits.  If you wish for health and comfort, do not suffer a place to exist in your camp that will toll flies to it.  The sinks should be some distance from your tents, and a dry spot of land is better than a wet one.  Observe the same rule in regard to all excrementitious and urinary matter.  On the march you can hardly do better than follow the Mosaic law (see Deuteronomy xxiii. 12, 13).