Camping -- Fiction; Manners and customs -- Fiction
"You have it," cried Mr. Archibald, "you've not only found out what you
are, but what you have to be. Your knowledge of yourself is perfect. And
now," he continued, "isn't there somebody who can tell us a story? When we
are sitting around a camp-fire, there is nothing better than stories.
Bishop, I dare say you have heard a good many in the course of your life.
Don't you feel like giving us one?"
"I think," said Corona, "that by the aid of stories it is possible to
get a very good idea of ourselves. For instance, if some one were to
tell a good historical story, and any one of us should find himself or
herself greatly interested in it, then that person might discover, on
subsequent reflection, some phase of his or her intellect which he or she
might not have before noticed. On the other hand, if it should be a
love story, and some of us could not bear to hear it, then we might
also find out something about ourselves of which we had been ignorant.
But I really think that, before making any tests of this sort, we
should continue the discussion of what is at present the main object
of our lives--self-knowledge and self-assertion. In other words, the
emancipation of the individual. As I have said before, and as we all
know, there never was a better opportunity offered a group of people
of mature minds to subject themselves, free of outside influences, to a
thorough mental inquisition, and then to exhibit the results of their
self-examinations to appreciative companions. This last is very important.
If we do not announce to others what we are, it is of scarcely any use to
be anything. I mean this, of course, in a limited sense."
"Harriet," said Mr. Archibald, abruptly, "do you remember where I left my
pipe? I do not like this cigar."
"On the shelf by the door of the cabin," she replied. "I saw it as I came
out."
Her husband immediately rose and left the fire. Corona paused in her
discourse to wait until Mr. Archibald came back; but then, as if she did
not wish to lose the floor, she turned towards the bishop, who sat at a
little distance from her, and addressed herself to him, with the idea of
making some collateral remarks on what she had already said, in order to
fill up the time until Mr. Archibald should return.
Mrs. Archibald thought that her husband had been a little uncivil; but
almost immediately after he had gone, she, too, jumped up, and, without
making any excuse whatever, hurried after him.
The reason for this sudden movement was that Mrs. Archibald had seen some
one approaching from the direction of Camp Roy. She instantly recognized
this person as Arthur Raybold, and felt sure that, unwilling to stay
longer by himself, he was coming to the camp-fire, and if her husband
should see him, she knew there would be trouble. What sort of trouble or
how far it might extend she did not try to imagine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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