Rain, rain, rain. The wind is up and about too, tearing around among the trees and shaking the cloth roof of my cabin. Here and there little trickles of water are coming through and running down the logs. Mine is a log cabin of the roughest make. Four logs piled atop of each other form the sides. A mud chimney at one end; a door at the other. The logs are very dry and very rotten and abound in those insects that delight in rotten wood. I have found scorpions under the bark and occasionally an earwig promenades over the table. I open the door and look out on the river. It is rising. Wrecks are coming down--boards, logs, lumber and an occasional sluice and pieces of fluming. There is an eddy around the turn of the hill above, where much of this drift runs in. I repair thither and make a few hauls. I secure a half-dozen good boards, some pieces of joist, some driftwood for fuel, and pile it up on the bank out of the swelling water’s reach. “Halloa!” That cry is from a couple of men on the other side of the river, plodding down the trail in oilskins. I know them. Two of the “boys” from Poverty Bar. They are going to Price’s store two miles below--store, grogshop, boarding-house, polling booth at election, ferry, etc. Being a rainy day they are going there to get drunk. That is not their avowed purpose on setting out, but it’s as near a certainty as anything can be in this world. I return to my cabin. The pie has baked. It is browner than I intended it should be. On one side it is almost black. It is ornamented about the rim with a row of scollops made by pressure of the thumb. Now I put in the bread, previously mixed and kneaded. I am not a good breadmaker. It is always bread too much baked, or too little, or too sour, or too yellow, or too heavy. But I don’t care. I bake only for myself and I am unfortunately too easily pleased and probably too lazy to take that care and elaborate preparation necessary for good bread. I never measure accurately the proportions of flour, water, and yeast powder necessary for good bread. I throw them together at random. It’s a “hit or miss”--generally miss. It’s too much trouble to bother about these small details. A particular friend of mine who stayed with me a few days reproved me for the poor quality of my bread and the general slovenliness apparent about my cooking utensils. “You have no pride,” said he.