He can fight well and shoot better, and swim
so as to put up a winning race with the Ind-
ian boys, and he can sit in the saddle all day
and not worry about it to-morrow.

Wherever he goes, he carries a camera.

"The world," Hoyt is in the habit of say-
ing to those who sit with him when he smokes
his pipe, "was created in six days to be pho-
tographed. Man -- and particularly woman --
was made for the same purpose. Clouds are
not made to give moisture nor trees to cast
shade. They have been created in order to
give the camera obscura something to do."

In short, Virgil Hoyt's view of the world
is whimsical, and he likes to be bothered
neither with the disagreeable nor the mysteri-
ous. That is the reason he loathes and detests
going to a house of mourning to photograph
a corpse. The bad taste of it offends him,
but above all, he doesn't like the necessity of
shouldering, even for a few moments, a part
of the burden of sorrow which belongs to
some one else. He dislikes sorrow, and
would willingly canoe five hundred miles up
the cold Canadian rivers to get rid of it.
Nevertheless, as assistant photographer, it is
often his duty to do this very kind of thing.