Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/186

kets you have with you, and you have (Fig. 110) as complete and comfortable a bed as any forester need wish for. In the place of pine-needles, hay or grass may be used. I have slept Image missingFig. 110.Bed made up. very comfortably upon a brush mattress covered with iron-weed.^[1]

I would suggest to any boy who means to try this rustic cabinet-making, to select carefully for the bed-posts sticks strong enough to support the weight he intends them to bear, otherwise his slumbers may be interrupted in an abrupt and disagreeable manner. My first experiment in this line proved disastrous. I spent the greater part of one day in building and neatly finishing a bed like the one described. After it was made up, with an army blanket for a coverlid, it looked so soft, comfortable, and inviting that I scarcely could wait for bedtime to try it.

When the evening meal was over and the last story told around the blazing camp-fire, I took off hat, coat, and boots and snuggled down in my new and original couch, curiously watched by my companions, who lay, rolled in their blankets, upon the hard ground. It does not take a boy long to fall asleep, particularly after a hard day's work in the open air, but it takes longer, after being aroused from a sound nap, for him to get his wits together—especially when suddenly dumped upon the ground with a crash, amid a heap of broken sticks and dry brush, as I happened to be on that eventful night. Loud and long were the shouts of laughter of my companions