This instinct of the camper has stamped itself upon American life
and thought. Venturesomeness, physical and moral daring,
resourcefulness in emergencies, indifference to negligible
details, wastefulness of materials, boundless hope and confidence
in the morrow, are characteristics of the American. It is
scarcely an exaggeration to say that the "good American" has been
he who has most resembled a good camper. He has had robust
health--unless or until he has abused it,--a tolerant
disposition, and an ability to apply his fingers or his brain to
many unrelated and unexpected tasks. He is disposed to blaze his
own trail. He has a touch of prodigality, and, withal, a knack of
keeping his tent or his affairs in better order than they seem.
Above all, he has been ever ready to break camp when he feels the
impulse to wander. He likes to be "foot-loose." If he does not
build his roads as solidly as the Roman roads were built, nor his
houses like the English houses, it is because he feels that he is
here today and gone tomorrow. If he has squandered the physical
resources of his neighborhood, cutting the forests recklessly,
exhausting the soil, surrendering water power and minerals into a
few far-clutching fingers, he has done it because he expects,
like Voltaire's Signor Pococurante, "to have a new garden
tomorrow, built on a nobler plan.
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