not be ashamed to decline all risks. The failure to do this may render a trip which has the greatest possibilities of pleasure and benefit only a disappointment and injury. Far better a long and comfortable experience free from all mishaps than a heedless one suddenly and perhaps disastrously terminated-too frequently with an end to all future wheeling.. Beware of coasting strange hills; of the "T wet and slippery pavement; of the lack of extra protection when stopping, or when the chill of evening comes on; and, finally, of such hill-climbing or over-exertion as may bring undue strain upon the heart. One who will exercise a reasonable care in these respects will, year after year, find the tour awheel the most charming, sensible, and health-building of all the ways of spending an outing. A Camp on Wheels By Charles R. Turner ELL how a pleasant and quiet vacation can be taken in a carriage or wagon, to combine pleasure and profit." Verily, instructions that open a vista wide as a world and deep as a purse, and then leave the imagination to run riot in speculations as to where, and who, and how many, and how long, and in a dozen other directions. However, the request finds me more in the mood to be helpful than to be critical, for have I not tasted the joys of "the days when we went gypsying, a long time ago"-in a veritable gypsy van, too- -a yacht on wheels? And though I have camped by Killarney's fair waters and tramped the plains of Picardy, have been wafted afloat over the waterways of Holland in a houseboat, and rocked in the cradle of the deep on many seas, my first choice, taken wide and by, is for the road by carriage. Why? Because! Imprimis-the road is at my own door-yard. Item: I can go in any of forty different ways, and come home by as many alternatives. Item: The roads run through pleasant places, and villages, and by stores, and are mapped with such exactness that I know exactly where I am at. I can scale out in advance every day, and the time of day I shall get there. Thereby I can possess myself of, or dispense with, the need of providing just so much or so little as will be required between two given points. Item: I can go like Darby and Joan, with just my better-half alone, or I can take the children. Indeed, one can make up a convoy of all one's friends and relations to the third and fourth generation; because each of the units on wheels of the caravan is absolutely independent of every other unit. Each has its own motive power, its own commissariat, its own particular guests. Item: Because those who don't like it can leave it any day (an advantage that does not apply to some places on land, as well as at sea). Because I can go to the hills (though preferably not, except to the foot-hills), or to the seashore; I can pass through the woods of solitude, or stay there, and can make my turning-point the fillip of some great city whose magnetic force has been drawing my fastened feet for many an expectant year. Because, en passant, I can see the people, hundreds of them, in detail and close at hand the real Americans; the lords of the plow and the reaper, the hardy sons of Anak from whom our cities draw their physical and moral health, the great silent millions of the up-country. Where they live I love to thread through as occasion offers here and yon, and to see their avocations. All which opportunities a permanent camp reduces to the lowest minimum. Now comes the crux! What am I to travel in? In England I would answer the question in a sentence-according to whether you wanted to sleep out, or sleep in wayside inns. I would say, divide your party into fours or sixes, and gypsyvan or family-wagonette it. But there are no gypsy vans here, so I must needs describe one, which is a simple matter; and then see how near we can come to getting one. A gypsy van, in brief, is a cabin on . four wheels, divisible across the center, transversely, by portière or partition. It should have a door at each end, opening inwards, though some have only a door and steps at the rear. It is substantially, though not heavily, built of light wood; has one or two windows on each side, and is roofed. The front and back doors and windows are draped, and when it is shut up it looks outwardly, and is inwardly, as snug and pretty as the cabin of a Dutch river lighter. The backward end is reserved as a parlor, the forward end as a sleeping compartment, and the cooking is done outside. The beds (in the regular gypsy van, but of this more anon) are bunks, one or two on each side, as needs may be, for the man, woman, and children. The dunnage is carried on top, and the fire and utensils underneath. The gypsy van is not here procurable for hire (though of course it could be built easily enough), but we can get several very close equivalents. I see every day vehicles which are easily capable of conversion into the very ideal tourist's van. For instance, the smaller sort of street horse-cars are being abandoned by the score every day for larger ones, as cables and electricity replace the horse. Now, the bodies of these, with doors and platforms at each end, light at the sides, and ventilation at the top, would make the very identical thing. They are capable of division by partition across the center, the seats would afford exactly the support that light bed-frames require, and the space occupied by the present wheels, under the seats, would make good storage. Of course every ounce of heavy ironwork connected with the present wheels would require stripping, and nothing but the actual frame be left. This would have to be remounted on an ordinary roadwagon frame and wheels. But supposing this is not available? Well, we must do with something less perfect. I see delivery and express vans and wagons quite capable of transformation. Notably those (and this is imperative if women and children are of the party) with solid sides and tops; the curtained ends may be tolerated. Whatever you choose, choose wide-wide enough to sleep crosswise. the top, so as to be able to place there the lighter packages and coarser material. The under part should be utilized to its fullest extent with drawers; and drive or screw a strong hook into every available place of the underneath woodwork. You will find every one of them handy for hanging or stringing something safe and away. There is a satisfactory alternative for those who, while using the horse as their motive power, prefer to stay at an inn each night; and that is the "family wagonette," which will carry four or five and luggage. Many very useful and beautiful styles of this are made here, and they are largely used for touring in Europe. I shall proceed, however, upon the hypothesis that the party will bed and board themselves, and therefore the next question is, What will be required to be carried? Well, it is one of the great advantages of this mode of touring that you can give the question of supplies a practical trial by having your vehicle close up to your house for days ahead, where you can see just what you can fit into it, and what you can do without. Beds will be a question of option, depending upon individual necessities and age and condition of the traveler. Some people would think mattresses on the floor a luxury enough. Some prefer fitted bunks, like those used at sea; while in some cases camp folding beds would meet the exigencies. My personal preference is for the plain, cheap camp folder, on folding legs; for the reason that I can take it up by day, set it up under a tree, and have the comfort of it as a lounge. The one imperative necessity is a reliable cooking outfit. There are many; my choice is Baxter's. It contains everything needful for cooking and serving six people, including a table 30 inches by 33 (with extensions if needed); and any ordinary fuel can be burned in it, preferably wood. The whole kit packs away neatly into a strapped case 30 inches long by 7 inches wide and 11 deep; weighs in all only 30 pounds, and can be placed under any ordinary carriage seat. All else is, in the main, a question of how you want to live and where you want to go, and needs really little explanation available, run a light wire fencing round to ordinary housewives, remembering that Whether either car or van is found ordinarily you will never be far from, and most days passing, some kind of store. Where you will pull in each night will, of course, depend upon where you are. In some places I have taken advantage of the friendly shelter of the shed of the roadhouse; in others, of a pasture lot by the roadside; in still others, the roadside, or seaside itself; occasionally a farmer's yard; and I have pulled up in the marketplace in the center of an old-fashioned town, and had and given great entertainment to and from the natives. Now I come to a subject that may limit the desire and number of those who would adopt the road-van as their motive power. Never start without one, at least, to each van who knows and is used to handling a horse, to harnessing it, to feeding it (especially to watering it, and knows when not to), to cleaning it, and to driving, and who is willing day by day to give attention to every one of these details. Further more, have each horse (and set of har ness) inspected before starting, for condition, for shoeing, and for character and fitness. You don't want screws, balkers, or sick horses on your hands. A con Now let us go back a little. dition precedent to enjoying a leisurely journey through a country, and the measure of the pleasure and profit you will get out of it, are found largely in the way you have prepared yourself for it. M Therefore never go into a district without having read up all about it-all its history and legend, national and personal; thereby you will enter it full of expectation and knowledge and sympathy, and your conversation will have a thousand pegs on which to hang its themes. Now let me go one step further on my hobby. Inasmuch as the face of nature, as it presents itself in landscape, plain, valley, rock, cliff, and shore, is mainly the result of the working of water in various forms, it would add vastly to the enjoy ment if some such elementary work as Tyndall's "Forms of Water" were mastered. I once found a friend of mine in New York entranced with the illustrations in it, which Professor Tyndall had drawn from Switzerland. I took my friend across the Fourteenth Street Ferry to the Palisades, and showed him, to his amazement, more and better examples that had lain bare within two miles of him all his life and often been passed by him unheeded; and yet I am in no sense a scientific geologist, nor need I be to receive many of science's greatest pleasures. Finally Take along a few of the choice writers on country natural history, such as Thoreau's "Autumn," Olive Thorne Miller's bird books, John Burroughs's "A Year in the Fields," or Gibson's delightful work with pen and pencil. They will point you to endless hidden delights. A Mountain Tramp By Henry Hoyt Moore OUNTAIN-CLIMBERS may be divided into two classes--those who climb the Matterhorn, and those who don't. I will say frankly that I prefer only to read about the doings of the first, and to join the latter class. Hairbreadth 'scapes are sufficiently exciting when one sees them on the printed page; the lover of the quiet outing shrinks a little when he imagines himself in the position of the man who is creeping along an inch-wide ledge above a bottomless gulf, or cutting precarious steps in a perpendicular ice-wall during a howling tempest. A great deal of the fun in that sort of amusement must come, in the opinion of the present writer, from the reflection afterwards that it is all over and one need never go there any more." But while the second class of mountain-climbers do not get so much excitement from their pet diversion, they get a great deal of sensible enjoyment. They get wholesome exercise, aesthetic pleasure, and physical regeneration, and they need not go far away from home or spend very much money on their outing-important considerations, these last, for many a man who has only the traditional two or three weeks' vacation, and does not wish to spend a year's sav ings in that time. Within these limitations the writer has, in the course of a few years, seen much of the finest scenery in New York and New England; and any one else may do the same thing if he chooses to adopt the same methods- -or better ones. It is to be presumed, at the start, that any one who reads this particular article with an idea of getting vacation suggestions from it is fond of walking, and that he would be willing to walk a good way for the sake of seeing a fine view. If one has not the capacity to dilate inwardly upon beholding a range of mountains, he would better not join our tramping party. And party there must be; the average mortal needs companionship on lonely roads, in strange hotels, and on high places which call forth enthusiastic comments that compass, drinking-cup, and various small impedimenta which will suggest themselves. A light overcoat or mackintosh may be strapped to the bag, or sent by express to convenient points where low temperature is expected. Of course the thorough-paced tramp will scorn the vehicle, of whatever form, that might offer him assistance; he will put up overnight at farm-houses; he will dine off crackers and cheese at the country store-and those same crackers and cheese are, upon occasion, not to be sneered at by the epicure! But the writer's party has had no hard and fast rules in these matters, and while in the strangers' country has foraged wherever an 30 should fall on sympathetic ears. The party need not consist of more than two or three; and if they are to be reasonably happy while they are together, they should be Pauline Christians, "in honor preferring one another;" and they may also take courage in their hard climbs from the Apostle's injunction to "mind not high things." The party, in order to be as independent as possible and ready for any emergency, should carry its own baggage; needless to say that this necessity will cause superfluous articles to be dropped from the outfit at the start. A fair-sized traveling-bag slung over the shoulder by a broad strap may contain a change of underclothing, an extra flannel shirt, a field-glass, a comb, toothbrush, inviting field presented itself. In other words, we walked where walking seemed agreeable, and rode when time pressed or monotonous scenery appeared. We made diligent inquiry as to which were the best hotels, and as to where we should be likely to get the best dinner-and the best dinner a man can get costs not a dime too much when he is out for pleasure and has had a walk that gives hunger and thirst unknown to city life. The rates at the "best hotels" in the less traveled regions will average only about $2 per day; on the high places, however, one must be prepared for high prices. A pleasant and inexpensive trip of this sort might be taken through the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, readily ac |