I would give more for a painting of this scene--that sun, that sky and wood, the water there, the brave, strong men, the thinkers and the workers there, nude and natural, silent and sincere, bending to their work--than for all the battle scenes that could be hung upon a palace wall. When the great man comes, the painter of the true and great, these men will be remembered. It is said that Diogenes, when he saw a boy drinking water from his hand, scooped up from the stream, threw away his cup, the last utensil he had retained. This shirt-washing went on in some camps for years. These men were compelled to study simplicity, and did from necessity nearly what the cynic did from caprice. Where every man had to carry his effects on his back for days and days, through steep and rugged paths, an extra garment was not to be thought of. Men got used to the one-shirt system, and seemed to like it. Some stuck to it with a tenacity hardly respectful to the near approach of civilization. Once upon a time, to coin a new beginning, a younger brother came out to visit one of these brave old miners, now gray and grizzled, but true to his old traditions and habits of life. He called on him on Sunday, entered his cabin, and found him covered in his blankets. "What, my brother, are you sick?" said he, after the first salutations and embraces were exchanged. "Sick! No, not sick." "Then why are you in bed?" "Oh! I washed my shirt to-day and got in bed to let it dry." "Why! Haven't you got but the one shirt?" "But the one shirt! No! Do you think a man wants a _thousand_ shirts?" These men were mostly shy with their letters and their tales of love. That was sacred ground, upon which no strange, rude feet could pass. No gold-hunter there, perhaps, but had his love--his one only love, without a chance or possibility of changing the object of his devotion, even if he had desired it. Men must love as well as women. It is the most natural and, consequently, the most proper thing on earth. Imagine how intensified and how tender a man's devotion would become under circumstances like these. The one image in his heart, the one hope--HER. So much time to think, bending to the work in the running water under the trees, on the narrow trail beneath the shadows of the forest, by the camp and cabin-fire, her face and hers only, with no new face rising up, crossing his path, confronting him for days, for months, for years--see how holy a thing his love would grow to be. This, you observe, is a new man, a new manner of lover. Love, I say, is a requirement, a necessity. It is as necessary for a complete man to love as it is for him to breathe pure air. And it is as natural.