Preface
In adding another to the list of stories bearing on that subject of perennial interest to boys, adventures in camp and on trail among the woods and lakes of Northern Maine, one thought has been the inspiration that led me on.
It is this: To prove to high-mettled lads, American, and English as well, that forest quarters, to be the most jovial quarters on earth, need not be made a shambles. Sensation may reach its finest pitch, excitement be an unfailing fillip, and fun the leaven which leavens the camping-trip from start to finish, even though the triumph of killing for triumph’s sake be left out of the play-bill.
“There is a higher sport in preservation than in destruction,” says a veteran hunter, whose forest experiences and descriptions have in part enriched this story. I commend the opinion to boy-readers, trusting that they may become “queer specimen sportsmen,” after the pattern of Cyrus Garst; and find a more entrancing excitement in studying the live wild things of the forest than in gloating over a dying tremor, or examining a senseless mass of horn, hide, and hoofs, after the life-spring which worked the mechanism has been stilled forever.
One other desire has trodden on the heels of the first: That Young England and Young America may be inspired with a wish to understand each other better, to take each other frankly and simply for the manhood in each; and that thus misconception and prejudice may disappear like mists of an old-day dream.
ISABEL HORNIBROOK.