And my personal favorite quote of all time
"And now for a little useless advice. In going into the woods, don't take a medicine chest or a set of surgical instruments with you. A bit of sticking salve, a wooden vial of anti-pain tablets and another of rhubarb regulars, your fly medicine, and a pair of tweezers, will be enough. Of course you have needles and thread.
If you go before the open season for shooting, take no gun. It will simply be a useless incumbrance and a nuisance.
If you go to hunt, take a solemn oath never to point the shooting end of your gun toward yourself or any other human being.
In still-hunting, swear yourself black in the face never to shoot at a dim, moving object in the woods for a deer, unless you have seen that it is a deer. In these days there are quite as many hunters as deer in the woods; and it is a heavy, wearisome job to pack a dead or wounded man ten or twelve miles out to a clearing, let alone that it spoils all the pleasure of the hunt, and is apt to raise hard feelings among his relations.
In a word, act coolly and rationally. So shall your outing be a delight in conception and the fulfillment thereof; while the memory of it shall come back to you in pleasant dreams, when legs and shoulders are too stiff and old for knapsack and rifle.
That is me. That is why I sit here tonight—with the north wind and sleet rattling the one window of my little den-writing what I hope younger and stronger men will like to take into the woods with them, and read. Not that I am so very old. The youngsters are still not anxious to buck against the muzzle-loader in off-hand shooting. But, in common with a thousand other old graybeards, I feel that the fire, the fervor, the steel, that once carried me over the trail from dawn until dark, is dulled and deadened within me.
We had our day of youth and May;
We may have grown a trifle sober;
But life may reach a wintry way,
And we are only in October.
Final Advice
Wherefore, let us be thankful that there are still thousands of cool, green nooks beside crystal springs, where the weary soul may hide for a time, away from debts, duns and deviltries, and a while commune with nature in her undress.
And with kindness to all true woodsmen; and with malice toward none, save the trout-hog, the netter, the cruster, and skin-butcher, let us
PREPARE TO TURN IN."
