“What a life to Lead! Never, or seldom, sleeping in a house, but out of doors, on Mother Earth’s sturdy bosom; dusty, dirty, rocky, muddy, often wet and always hard; bugs, flies, fleas, mosquitoes, centipedes, earwigs, rattlesnakes, and scorpions as occasional companions; in the neighborhood of rats, bats, wolves, foxes, coyotes, and skunks, and now and then bears and mountain lions; cooking over a camp fire where everything gets smoked, black, and dirty beyond remedy, and where handles get red-hot and cut into one’s flesh, and where smoke gives flavor to everything,—-and this in the best of weather. But in “other” weathers! Think of cooking in a sand-storm with fine sand penetrating everything; in a rain-storm, when wood is wet, fire won’t burn, and everybody is ill-tempered, and hungry; in a wind-storm, when the smoke whirls and swirls in every direction, and one’s eyes are blinded, and the fire burns now to the east, then to the west, veers to the north, then to the south, and finally to all points of the compass and up and down at the same time! And eating and sleeping and riding and driving and working have all to be done under similar adverse conditions.”
