The Norfolk weekly news-journal., 1907-11-15
CANOEING DOWN STREAM
Dr. Mackay Tells Of the Delights Of
| Autumn's Out-of-Doors.

Norfolk, Neb., Nov. SIT was in
the time of the falling leaves. We
QUILTED our canoe with blankets, a
small store of provisions and few
cooking utensils, for canoe is a frail
craft and bears only light burden,
and then, with guns and dog aboard
we cast ourselves adrift below the dam
at Norfolk for a few days voyaging
down the ElkhOrn. With dip of the
paddle here and there to guide our
course we journeyed down stream at
a fair rate of speed in the most de-
lightful of all cruises along natures
captivating highway, pausing ever and
anon for game or photograph Of
some charming bit of landscape
Reader, have you ever fioated down
stream in a canoe? If not you have
yet to experience emotions that have
a gamut all their own, Incompatible
in symphony with all others. Down
the current carried us along cleaning
lanes, that reached away in far dis
tant vistas, around tortuous bends,
past swirling eddies, hurrying us over
ripples and, leisurely, as if taking a
breathing spell, through long stretches
of wide, still water where great RATS
of fallen leaves fioated about, down
between high, tree-fringed banks, fes-
TONED with trailing creepers and
where we lost the noisy, outside world
down past bars of smooth, wet sand
where cattle stood lazily drinking and
eying us with look of wonder in
their dreamy eyes, past mud flats
where jack snipes scurried away and
out into open places where, through
the Unfolding haze and far-strewn Cos
samer threads, we gaZed away across
lumber fields towards the dreamful
hills that seemed to belong to another
world reposing there in the somno-
lence of natures hypnotism. We tar
ried betimes by sunny banks, where
spreading elms reached out inviting
arms to subdue a ravening appetite
that came upon us out of the mystic
rious realm of the out of doors, and
how savory and satisfying those birds,
fish and rabbits were. Behold, what
an alchemist is nature, transmitting
indifferently fried rabbit into a ban
quet fit for the gods! Could we but
ensnare and bottle her elusive secret
and carry it back to the dyspeptic who
stimulates and peptonizes and brutal
ICES his stomach needless of natures
healing power and mindful only of his
business, what a mighty uplift 1t
would give to the market quotations!
In all nature man alone reckons
time and, strangely, never considers
that, soon or late, he must take a day
off from business in which to die, for
a man must die as we'll as live and
transact business. What vast
amount of hysterical emotion we are
today bestowing upon the quality of
our food, forgetting that it's injurious
effects lie largely within ourselves and
with our habits of living. Pampered
and gorged, living in lighthouses with
plastered walls and double windows
and doors, swathed in fannels and
wrapped in furs, living sedentary lives
and stunning the sunlight and fresh
air the system becomes surcharged
with toxines, its resistance enfeebled
and 1t becomes a prey to congestive,
inflammatory and degenerative condi-
tions and every decade the great white
plague demands 100000 victims and
all these directly chargeable to i'm