“As the question involves, in some sense, a physiological fact,” replied the Doctor, “it comes within the range of my professional duties to understand and be able to answer it, for you must know that the enjoyments of this region are primarily physical.  Now I’ve a theory which is this—­that every man has a certain amount of vagabondism in his composition that will be pretty certain to break out in spots occasionally.  At all events it is so with me, and from my observation of men, I am strong in the faith that it is so with every one who is neither more nor less than human.  It is all a mistake to suppose that I come off here, enduring a heap of hardship and toil, simply for the love of fishing and hunting, though I confess to a weakness to a certain extent that way.  The charm of this region consists in the fact, that it is the best place to play the vagabond, and in which to do the savage for a season, that I know of.  You can go bareheaded or barefooted, without a coat or neckerchief, get as ragged and untidy as you please, without subjecting yourself to remark, or offending the nice sense of propriety pertaining to conventional life.  You are not responsible for what you say or do, provided always that you do not offend against the abstract rules of decency, or the requirements of natural decorum.  You can lay around loose; the lazier you are the better the boatman in your employ likes it.  If you choose to drift leisurely and quietly under the shadow of the hills along the shore, examining the rocks that lie there like a ruined wall, or explore the beautiful and secluded bays that hide around behind the bluffs, or lay off under the shade of the fir trees on the islands, or smoke your cigar or pipe by the beautiful spring that comes bubbling up by the side of some moss-covered boulder, or from beneath the tangled roots of some gnarled birch or maple, you can do any or all of these, and have a man to help you for twelve shillings a day and board, or you can do it just about as well alone.

“You remember LONESOME ROCK, in the Lower Saranac, a great boulder that lifts its head some ten or fifteen feet above the surface, away out near the middle of the lake, around which the water is of unknown depth.  This rock, which is always dark and bare, is, as you will remember, of conical shape, sharp pointed at the top, and stands up about the size of a small hay-stack, in the midst of the waters.  Do you remember the account that somebody gives in a ragged but terse kind of verse, of the ‘gentleman in black,’ who, as he walked about,

     ’Backward and forward he switched his long rail,
     As a gentleman switches his cane?’

And of whose dress it was facetiously said: 

     ’His coat was red and his breeches were blue,
     With a hole behind for his tail to stick through.’

another author said of him on one of his fishing excursions, that

     ’His rod, it was a sturdy mountain oak,
     His line, a cable which no storm e’er broke,
     His hook he baited with a dragon’s tail,
     And sat upon a rock and bob’d for whale!’