regiment of hungry men who ate almost a deer a day; and there is the
little bark shelter on the side of Mount Marcy, where the governor
and the boy, with baskets full of trout from the Opalescent River, are
spending the night, with nothing but a fire to keep them warm. There is
the North Bay at Moosehead, with Joe La Croix (one more Frenchman who
thinks he looks like Napoleon) posing on the rocks beside his canoe,
and only reconciled by his vanity to the wasteful pastime of taking
photographs while the big fish are rising gloriously out at the end
of the point. There is the small spring-hole beside the Saranac River,
where Pliny Robbins and the boy caught twenty-three noble trout,
weighing from one to three pounds apiece, in the middle of a hot August
afternoon, and hid themselves in the bushes when ever they heard a party
coming down the river, because they did not care to attract company; and
there are the Middle Falls, where the governor stood on a long spruce
log, taking two-pound fish with the fly, and stepping out at every cast
a little nearer to the end of the log, until it slowly tipped with him,
and he settled down into the river.

Among such scenes as these the boy pursued his education, learning many
things that are not taught in colleges; learning to take the weather
as it comes, wet or dry, and fortune as it falls, good or bad;
learning that a meal which is scanty fare for one becomes a banquet for
two--provided the other is the right person; learning that there is some
skill in everything, even in digging bait, and that what is called luck
consists chiefly in having your tackle in good order; learning that a
man can be just as happy in a log shanty as in a brownstone mansion, and
that the very best pleasures are those that do not leave a bad taste
in the mouth. And in all this the governor was his best teacher and his
closest comrade.