A little stove warmed her sitting-room at need, and once a fortnight a man went to the nearest town and brought her books. Letters she avoided, and her family agreed to notify her at once of any real occasion for her presence. Even newspapers were shut out, and thus she began her new life. Her men shot birds and deer, and the lake gave her black bass, and with these and well-chosen canned vegetables and other stores she did well enough as to food. The changing seasons brought her strange varieties of flowers, and she and her friend took industriously to botany, and puzzled out their problems unaided save by books. Very soon rowing, fishing, and, at last, shooting were added to her resources. Before August came she could walk for miles with a light gun, and could stand for hours in wait for a deer. Then she learned to swim, and found also refined pleasure in what I call word-sketching, as to which I shall by and by speak. Photography was a further gain, taken up at my suggestion. In a word, she led a man's life until the snow fell in the fall and she came back to report, a thoroughly well woman.
A more notable case was that of a New England lady, who was sentenced to die of consumption by at least two competent physicians. Her husband, himself a doctor, made for her exactly the same effort at relief which was made in the case I have detailed, except that when snow fell he had built a warm log cabin, and actually spent the winter in the woods, teaching her to live out in the air and to walk on snow-shoes. She has survived at least one of her doctors, and is, I believe, to this day a wholesome and vigorous wife and mother.
What large wealth did to help in these two cases may be managed with much smaller means. All through the White Mountains, in summer, you may see people, a whole family often, with a wagon, going from place to place, pitching their tents, eating at farm-houses or hotels, or managing to cook at less cost the food they buy. Our sea-coast presents like chances. With a good tent or two, which costs little, you may go to unoccupied beaches, or by inlet or creek, and live for little. I very often counsel young people to hire a safe open or decked boat, and, with a good tent, to live in the sounds along the Jersey coast, going hither and thither, and camping where it is pleasant, for, with our easy freedom as to land, none object. When once a woman--and I speak now of the healthy--has faced and overcome her dread of sun and mosquitoes, the life becomes delightful. The Adirondacks, the Alleghanies, and the Virginia mountains afford like chances, for which, as these are in a measure remote, there must be a somewhat more costly organization. I knew well a physician who every summer deserted his house and pitched tents on an island not over three miles from home, and there spent the summer with his family, so that there are many ways of doing the same thing.