memory of last year; at simple questions by the country lads, who sat with us at times while we feasted, but who never would join us, being shy and proud; at a certain stupid kind of bird that waited every day to be shot; we laughed infinitely at the logs, when we learned their ways; we named them, patted their rough backs, or rubbed the old bald ones; we leaped out and rode on them, and tried to walk on them like the logmen, and always tumbled in, and came up blowing and laughing.
This reminds me of a story. We had stopped near a camp of logmen, and they paid us a visit. Among them was a big brawny fellow, who evidently was full of conceit, and who, we were quietly told, had been bragging all the season of his prowess as a boxer. It was Sunday evening, and he was dressed as a heavy swell, cloth trousers, silver watch, a "biled" shirt, etc. When the loggers saw the boxing-gloves, they wanted their heavy man to spar. Guiteras (the best heavy-weight ever known at Harvard and the Cribb Club) was willing to set-to with him. But the big fellow "didn't feel well to-day"; he would only smile in a superior way.
At last we got afloat and shoved off. Then the big fellow jumped up and ran out on some logs in the river, and bared his arm to the shoulder.
