Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14)

by Elbert Hubbard
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WILLIAM H. SEWARD
ABRAHAM LINCOLN




THE LITTLE JOURNEYS CAMP

BERT HUBBARD

A little more patience, a little more charity for all, a little
more devotion, a little more love; with less bowing down to the
past, and a silent ignoring of pretended authority; a brave
looking forward to the future with more faith in our fellows, and
the race will be ripe for a great burst of light and life.
--Elbert Hubbard

[Illustration: THE LITTLE JOURNEYS CAMP]


It was not built with the idea of ever becoming a place in history: simply
a boys' cabin in the woods.

Fibe, Rich, Pie and Butch were the bunch that built it.

Fibe was short for Fiber, and we gave him that name because his real name
was Wood. Rich got his name from being a mudsock. Pie got his because he
was a regular pieface. And they called me Butch for no reason at all
except that perhaps my great-great-grandfather was a butcher.

We were a fine gang of youngsters, all about thirteen years, wise in boys'
deviltry. What we didn't know about killing cats, breaking window-panes in
barns, stealing coal from freight-cars, and borrowing eggs from
neighboring hencoops without consent of the hens, wasn't worth the
knowing.

There used to be another boy in the gang, Skinny. One day when we ran away
to the swimming-hole after school, this other little fellow didn't come
back with us.

You see, there was the little-kids' swimmin'-hole and the big-kids'
swimmin'-hole. The latter was over our heads. Well, Skinny swung out on
the rope hanging from the cottonwood-tree on the bank of the big-kids'
hole. Somehow he lost his head and fell in.

None of us could swim, and he was too far out to reach. There was nothing
to help him with, so we just had to watch him struggle till he had gone
down three times. And there where we last saw him a lot of bubbles came
up. The inquiry before the Justice of Peace with our fathers, which
followed, put fright in our bones, and the sight of the old creek was a

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