The instinct of barbarism that leads people periodically to throw aside the habits of civilization, and seek the freedom and discomfort of the woods, is explicable enough; but it is not so easy to understand why this passion should be strongest in those who are most refined, and most trained in intellectual and social fastidiousness. -from Chapter VI: "Camping Out" Hilariously snide and sarcastic, these essays of an American Victorian gentleman's adventures in the great outdoors are strikingly contemporary; for all that they were first published in 1878. Warner relates his encounters with such denizens of the wildness as the bear (who "minds his own business more thoroughly than any person I know") and the deer ("who would like to be friendly with men, but whose winning face and gentle ways are no protection from the savageness of man"), shares his feelings on the "unromantic" Adirondacks ("I suppose the red Indian lived here in his usual discomfort"), and regales us with the kind of misadventures that "some people call pleasure. " American essayist and novelist CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER (1829-1900) served on the editorial staffs of the Hartford Press, the Hartford Courant, and Harpers Magazine. He was the first president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and published numerous books, including My Summer in a Garden (1870), My Winter on the Nile (1876), and a biography of Washington Irving (1881).