Under its curious double government by faculty and boys, Camp Chocorua prospered and grew. The personal and routine work was done, the boys played baseball or tennis, they swam and dived, and went sailing, rowing and paddling. No ambition was greater in the mind of a camp boy than that of owning a canoe, and as many of them were not rich enough to buy, the boat-yard was established in the cove. Here was the carpenter shop, with a full set of tools and a bench, and outside its open door were the ways on which the canoes were built. At one time the yard was full of the pretty little boats in all stages, from the keel with its newly joined ribs to the completed canoe on whose canvas cover the paint was slowly drying. Exceedingly good canoe builders some of the boys turned out to be, and their models were not only fast but safe. Here, too, was the floor on which they cut their sails, or sat and talked as they stitched in the leach lines or fastened the reef points in place. Many of the canoes were the work of their owners' hands in every part--hull, paddle, sails, and rigging. When the fleet came in, paddling in open order, I never saw anything prettier in my life than the white hulls gliding so easily over the placid water, the boys singing and keeping stroke, while beyond lay the green islands, casting the long shadows from their trees under the setting sun. It was in this yard that the great flatboat was built in which the whole camp moved about the lake, ten oars on a side, and every boy tugging for all he knew. An unwieldy craft, in which one earned his passage. It was in this yard, too, that the best canoe designers earned much money from their less skilful comrades.