or write them; a place to make waterfalls and dams, to sail chips, or build boats; a place to make a fire and a cup of tea for the oldsters.  Stay here till four in the afternoon, and then push on in the two or three hours which are left to the sleeping-place agreed upon.  Four or five hours on the road is all you want in each day.  Even resolute idlers, as it is to be hoped you all are on such occasions, can get eight miles a day out of that; and that is enough for a true walking-party.  Remember all along that you are not running a race with the railway-train.  If you were, you would be beaten certainly; and the less you think you are, the better.  You are travelling in a method of which the merit is that it is not fast, and that you see every separate detail of the glory of the world.  What a fool you are, then, if you tire yourself to death, merely that you may say that you did in ten hours what the locomotive would gladly have finished in one, if by that effort you have lost exactly the enjoyment of nature and society that you started for!”

The advice to rest in the heat of the day is good for very hot weather; young people, however, are too impatient to follow it unless there is an apparent necessity.  The feeling at twelve o’clock that you have yet to walk as far as you have come is not so pleasant as that of knowing you have all the afternoon for rest.  For this reason nearly every one will finish the walk as soon as possible; still Mr. Hale’s plan is a good one—­the best for very hot weather.

STILL ANOTHER WAY TO TRAVEL.

Mr. Hale also tells an amusing story of his desire when young to sail down the Connecticut River; but he was dissuaded from doing so when the chance finally came, by people who thought the road was the only place to travel in.  And now he is sorry he did not sail.

The reading of his story brings to mind a similar experience that I had when young, and it is now one of the keen regrets of my manhood, that I likewise was laughed out of a boyish plan that would have given me untold pleasure and profit had it been carried out.  I loved to walk, and I wanted to see the towns within a circuit of twenty or thirty miles of home; but I could not afford to pay hotel-bills, and I was not strong enough to carry a camping-outfit.  But I had an old cart, strong and large enough to hold all I should need.  I could load it with the same food that I should eat if I staid at home; could wear my old clothes, take my oilcloth overcoat, an axe, frying-pan, pail, and a borrowed tent and poles; and I would learn the county by heart before vacation was over, and not cost my father a cent more than if I staid at home.  Oh, why didn’t I go!  Simply because I was laughed out of it.  I was told that people did not travel in that way; I should be arrested; the boys would hoot at and stone me; the men would set their dogs on me; I should be driven out of my camping-place; thieves would steal my seventy-five cent cart; dogs would eat up my stock of food; and the first man who overtook me would tell the people that a crazy boy from Portland was coming along the road dragging a baby-wagon, whereupon every woman would leave her kitchen, and every man his field, to see and laugh at me.  But, above all, the thing would be known in our neighborhood, and the boys and girls would join in their abuse of the county explorer.