There is heaps of fun in cooking your own dinner. What does it matter if the chicken is scorched on the outside while raw in the middle? The potatoes with crisp skins but underdone in the centre? Corn just warmed through? Coffee hot if muddy? Paper plates? Butter mixed with pepper? Salt mixed with sugar? Water and milk blending beautifully together? Bread and pie in close embrace? Pickles and jam exchanging flavors? As one good little boy said: "What did it matter? Even if you separated them ever so carefully, they were bound to mix up in your stomach; so if they were mixed up beforehand it saved time and trouble afterwards."
You couldn't serve such a meal as the above indoors. It wouldn't taste right, and it would not look right. It needs the open air, with a background of green forest; a gentle breeze blowing the smoke in one's eyes as you watch the fish frying; the cool water at your feet inviting you to jump in, to cool your fevered brow and wash some of the smudge off yourself at the same time. To say nothing of a crowd of hungry boys who have left their manners and fussy notions at home! Here they can get along without a waiter standing at the back of their chair, without an anxious mother coaxing them to eat the tenderloin, so long as they can see their full share coming to them, they are happy.
I know lots of boys who at home are waited upon hand and foot. Yet these same congenial spirits can work like Trojans when out for a day's sport, can build dandy fireplaces with no better material than sand wet with water and bound with cobble stones.
The same boys can cook a meal fit for a king. I don't mean the King of the Cannibal Islands, but a real ruler, because from what I have read the cannibals are not so very particular. Anything that comes their way, so long as it will make a large, juicy meal, will do. They don't care whether the meal is composed of a real good, young missionary or an old tough trader. They would even take a party of elderly spinsters and cook them for quite a while, adding some extra seasoning.
But these boys I have in mind can cook fish, chicken, potatoes and coffee in a way to make you thankful you are living, both before and after the meal.
After the meal is over the question of washing up comes before the board. Most boys would prefer to throw the whole business in the lake, but, having pledged ourselves to see that they were returned promptly to the kitchen, we cannot allow that.
As usual, there are always one or two who are more willing than the rest. They start in to scrape the debris together, put water on the fire to get hot, and in many ways show that there was lost to mankind a good girl when that boy was created.
No matter where one travels, Nature is charming in her virgin freshness. Then look at the difference as soon as human beings step in. The ground is torn up, the flowers trampled underfoot, trees chopped down, empty cans left lying around, on every side upset, and untidiness! Wouldn't it be nice if we just tried to leave the woods and shore as nearly like we found it, not an eyesore, but a pleasure to go back to again?
