MY NEW HOME 
 
 IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN, 
 
 BY CHARI/ES W 
 
 TBENTON, N. J. : 
 PRINTED LY W. S. AND E. W. SHAKP, 23 EAST STATE STREET. 
 
 1874. 
 
Entered according to act of Congress (before Congressional virtue had festered 
 ^ into Credit MoUlier villainy and back pay theft,) in the year 1874, by 
 
 CHARLES W. JAY, 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, 
 
DEDICATED. 
 
 FIRST To CHARLES V. MEAD, who, in the day of direst necessity 
 came voluntarily to my relief, and positively refused all recompense, 
 when, at a more fortunate period, I had the ability to evidence my 
 honesty and gratitude. 
 
 SECOND To the public, from whom I never received or deserved 
 favors. 
 
 THIRD To myself, as an egotist who attempted fame without sta 
 bility of character, and succeeded only in achieving a questionable 
 notoriety. 
 
 M272147 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Biographical 9 
 
 Prefatory 12 
 
 My Xew Home in Northern Michigan 15 
 
 How the "Old Settler" Settled My Potato Bugs 56 
 
 The First Death in Our Little Sunday School 62 
 
 Darwinism Vindicated and Confirmed 69 
 
 A Tale of the Wars of Pontiac 74 
 
 My First Hunt in My Xew Home 102 
 
 My Maple Ill 
 
 Another Interesting Interview with the "Old Settler".... 115 
 
 The Vision 127 
 
 Jane Jerusha Skeggs 128 
 
 A Two Dollar Visit from the "Old Settler" 130 
 
 The Deserted Cabin, A Tale of Northern Michigan 135 
 
 I Meet My First "Ingin" 144 
 
 The Spectre of the Hemlock Gorge 150 
 
 My Mother 162 
 
 The "Old Settler" Goes to Church in Full Dress 163 
 
 To My Little Sparrow 176 
 
 My Angel 177 
 
 To the Reader... ...178 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 fllHE average reader of those kind of books that are mainly 
 JL founded on the personality of the writer, are apt to be 
 curiously inclined to know something of the private history 
 of the one who thus ventures publicly before them as a 
 claimant to their favorable consideration. There is generally 
 a feeling of sympathy with such reader toward such author, 
 which strengthens with the progress of perusal, until it 
 ripens into the desire of a more minute knowledge of the 
 outer and inner life of him who has so interested them. 
 
 Knowing that this little book, the child of my later years, 
 will be kindly received and welcomed by a large number of 
 men, and a far greater number of women the latter always 
 permitting the flood of sympathy, in which eddies the worth 
 less driftwood of " sentiment," to overflow the shallower 
 depths of the brain I proceed at once to unlock myself to 
 all such as may be under the suggestions of curiosity, or 
 the promptings of interest, for a glance or a stare at the 
 " elephant," as he swings his inky trunk through the coming 
 pages. 
 
 Like all truly great and eminent men at least in this 
 our own country I was born " of poor but respectable 
 parents." My father was a shoemaker, and waxed poorer 
 and poorer with the yearly increase of his family, until he 
 could hardly make both ends meet. His sole means of 
 support was his trade, at which he hammered away day 
 and night, in order to get the upper hand of the hard 
 necessity that tacks d all his energies. At last, by unre 
 lieved confinement, he was assailed by a stitch in the side, 
 
PREFATORY. 
 
 THIS is my first attempt at publication outside of the col 
 umns of a newspaper. Through a period of thirty years I 
 have been connected with journalism in the city of Trenton, 
 and have written more upon the ephemeral subjects of the 
 hour than any other man in the State of New Jersey ; and 
 -without boasting, may be permitted to say that but very few 
 other writers have penned so little worthy of preservation. 
 I wrote as the humor happened to direct or necessity impelled. 
 ess of what I said, indifferent to public opinion, reck 
 less of the effect upon my personal interests, I " went in " on 
 the Irish injunction of " wherever you see a head, hit it." 
 
 The natural consequence, of course, reacted upon myself. 
 Talent, misguided, may be in demand when the temporary 
 passions of the people blind them to the amenities of contro 
 versy, or the whispered monitions of judgment; but as the 
 tumult passes, and reason returns, the champion of mere 
 strife is weighed in a more carefully adjusted balance, and 
 " found wanting " is labelled upon his merits. I know and 
 feel all this, but it is a principle of moral law that the reck 
 less man learns wisdom when it is too late to be benefited 
 thereby. Whether this law is relaxed in individual cases, is 
 in-: now a conundrum in which I have special interest, and 
 the solution cannot be very far distant. 
 
 But to this book. I resolved upon it only a few weeks 
 ago, and have written it without method or forethought, and 
 with all the rapidity that I could draft into the service. In 
 fact, it has been rather an effort of muscle than of mind, and 
 a charitable judgment is invoked upon the result. Rude sir, 
 
PREFATORY. 13 
 
 or gentle madam, to be honestly blunt with you, the writer 
 needed money, and as borrowing is " played out," in panic 
 times, your servant adopted the only alternative that gave a 
 faint promise of temporary relief. What little of pecuniary 
 value remained to the subscriber in this world, went up in 
 that interesting balloon, known as the Northern Pacific Rail 
 road. 
 
 And therein rests the reason, explanatory of the fact of my 
 charging so much more for this volume than it is really worth ! 
 When one has been badly skinned by reposing confidence in 
 others, it seems that he naturally takes a sort of melancholy 
 satisfaction in getting even by skinning everybody else who 
 can be inveigled within the reach of his clutches. That s 
 what s the matter with your author. 
 
 It is proper to state that a portion of my work in refer 
 ence to Northern Michigan was written at odd hours for 
 Beecher s Magazine, and is republished without revisal, and 
 with all its imperfections as first hastily penned. Most 
 of the other sketches were recently reeled off, and handed to 
 the printer just as they dropped from the pen, without addi 
 tion or subtraction. I know they are very imperfect, far 
 short of what a purchaser has the right to expect. But I ve 
 got your money, and what are you going to do about it ? 
 The financial morals of the American Congress must be sus 
 tained by an enlightened and loyal constituency. That s the 
 kind of a man I am ! 
 
 As I said before, this is my first effort in the story line of 
 publication, and written under the spur of necessity. And 
 if the two love tales herein unfolded seem maudlin to the 
 ancient maiden or the wrinkled beau, please retrace your own 
 earlier days of romance, and remember that we boys will be 
 boys, and that the love foibles of youth are the most pardon 
 able in heaven and on earth, of all the weaknesses of our 
 
14 PREFATORY. 
 
 poor fallen nature. Spinster of an uncertain age ; beaux 
 rejuvenated by hair dye, and unhappy because December is 
 not June, relax the frown of jealous envy, and take a philo 
 sophic view of the antics of us youth ! 
 
 A few words more, and I disappear from my introductory 
 audience. 
 
 There are certain smart fools, who appreciate sound better 
 than sense, who will be able to find a world of fault with 
 these unpremeditated compositions. Before all such, I kneel 
 in confession at the threshold. The writer of these pages 
 never studied grammar an hour in his life, and at this 
 moment does not know the scholastic distinction between 
 a noun and a pronoun, a verb and an adverb, a participle 
 and and that other feller of the parts of speech, whose 
 name I have forgotten. And the beauty of it is that I don t 
 care the flip of a copper for all such deficiencies. 
 
 " What s all the learning of your schools, 
 Your Latin names for horns and stools ? 
 If honest Nature made you fools, 
 
 What s all your grammar?" 
 
 But I fear that this will be found too extensive a prelude to 
 the careless and indifferent performance that is to follow. I 
 only again exclaim, in the language of the illustrious Tweed, 
 martyr to spasmodic municipal virtue, " I ve got your money, 
 and ichat are you yolny to do about if /" 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 AFTER an almost unbroken residence of fifty years, by 
 birth and citizenship, in the State of New Jersey, on the 
 evening of the 13th of November, 1871, I turned my face 
 Westward to join my family in Northern Michigan, wife and 
 children having preceded me by a few months. Perhaps 
 there is no man, however stolid by nature, or hardened by 
 habit, who can release the ties of a lifetime, and bid adieu to 
 scenes endeared by associations running back to the earliest 
 recollections of childhood, without at least a momentary sad 
 ness shrouding all his thoughts, and recalling his moral 
 outlawry back to the comparative purity of earlier years. Not 
 being a preceptible exception to this natural law of emotion, 
 I admit, without moral reservation or secreted intent of 
 deception, that I turned my back upon the city of my birth 
 and took up the long journey before me, with not exactly 
 that alacrity of feeling that is popularly supposed to animate 
 the bridegroom on his way to a marriage altar, or his after 
 trip for a Chicago divorce. As the train lumbered over the 
 Old Delaware Bridge at the legal speed of three miles an 
 hour, I found that my heart was in rebellion at my self- 
 expatriation, and that a perceptible trifle of unwonted moisture 
 had welled up from some long-neglected spring away down 
 in the darkened recesses of memory. 
 
 But this effervescent weakness was not of long duration. 
 Sorrows of this nature are like those of childhood, touching 
 but brief ; the sun soon absorbs the April shower. It has 
 
16 MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 been divinely and wisely ordered that pangs of feeling are 
 not chronic; they touch sharply and depart swiftly; there 
 would be small happiness in the world else. 
 
 At midnight the train that bore the undersigned and his 
 fortunes moved slowly out from the depot of the Pennsylvania 
 Central, just over the Market street Schuylkill bridge, at 
 Philadelphia, and pushed on into the darkness upon its 
 mission. 
 
 But fate seemed averse to my " new departure/ and mani 
 fested her displeasure at my rebellion throughout the journey. 
 AVhile the glare of the city lights was still visible from the 
 car windows, the iron horse balked, and notwithstanding the 
 fireman " hauled him over the coals/ he only continued to 
 snort at intervals for a full hour before he could be goaded to 
 his ordinary speed. 
 
 Lager is a great somnificator, and the undersigned soon 
 faded away gently into the arms of sleep. 
 
 " Sleep that knits up the ravell d sleeve of care" 
 
 is one of the few ancient institutions that has not gone out of 
 fashion, and still maintains its original connection with its 
 younger brother, Death, in the counterfeit business. Sleep 
 pretends to be death, and awakes in this world. Death fools 
 annihilation by leaping from the grave into the indescribable 
 glory of eternal life. If this is a delusion, in God s name 
 hold on to it ! It never hurt anybody yet. 
 
 Early dawn found us entering the gorges of the Alleghe- 
 nies. A furious storm howled through the desert solitude, 
 and the lofty tree tops swayed to and fro, as if seeking relief 
 from agony. On our right the beautiful but erratic Junjata 
 wound its way towards the still more lovely Susquehanna ; 
 
MY NEW HOME IX XORTHERX MICHIGAN. 17 
 
 and just here memory awoke as from a long protracted sleep, 
 and unrolled one of her strangest pages for my perusal. 
 
 Nearly thirty-five years ago, ere I had arrived at the estate 
 of a voting citizen of this great and greatly humbugged 
 republic, I passed along this very spot, on the bosom of this 
 very river, looking exactly as it does now, unchanged by time 
 and its innovations. I was then on my way to Ohio, at that 
 day a frontier State, with the great West beyond almost un 
 known, and a Pacific Railroad undreamed of, save in the 
 despotic vagaries of Tom Ben ton. I had six silver half- 
 dollars in my pocket, with two dollars worth of wardrobe 
 secured in a shilling handkerchief, and my passage paid to 
 Cincinnati. A strong heart and willing hands were con 
 sidered a good outfit for a boy-man in those days. It is 
 different now. 
 
 The Juniata at that time was made tributary to the needs 
 of internal commerce by what was called "slack water naviga 
 tion." Dams were constructed across the river at intervals, 
 by which its waters were widened out into ponds. From the 
 canal our boat would be guided into these ponds, dragged 
 along for miles, then slipped on to trucks that ran into the 
 water from the railroad track, railroaded other miles, then 
 again slid into the canal, then into the river, and so alternat 
 ing to the end. 
 
 It seems strange to look back and see how we were carried 
 over the highest ridges of the mountains. At the top of 
 the ridges were powerful stationary engines. When our boat 
 on the railroad trucks would reach the base of these steep 
 elevations, a huge cable would be made fast to the head 
 of the train, and the stationary engine would draw us 
 up the dangerous steep. When we reached the short level of 
 the top, the cable would be attached to the rear, and we 
 would be let down on the other side by a like process. Taint 
 
18 MY NEW HOME IX NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 so now ! AVe go over and under, thread valleys and wind 
 precipices, pass innumerable " dead lines " within an inch of 
 eternal smash, and the traveller, unless he chances to look 
 from his window, cannot tell if it be prairie or mountain he 
 is crossing. 
 
 I remember one sight in that early trip over the mountains 
 that fastened my attention so that it will be available unto 
 death. The board shanties that enclosed these stationary 
 engines just referred to, were fairly "papered 77 with the 
 skins of huge rattlesnakes, tacked thereto by the attendants, 
 who had amused their idle hours by capturing these inter 
 esting specimens of natural history. The exhibition fairly 
 made my flesh creep, snakelike, then, and the memory of it 
 now is not exactly a soothing balm to nervous inquietude. 
 
 As we descended the western slope of the mountain, fate 
 renewed her attempts to thwart my purpose of leaving New 
 Jersey to mourn my permanent removal from her territory. 
 Our delay at Philadelphia had given an emigrant train the 
 " right of way/ 7 and as this train had a trifle less than four 
 teen thousand Dutchmen on board, bound for Wisconsin and 
 Minnesota, its headway was retarded beyond the usual dila 
 tory gait of such lines, as governed by the " time table." 
 One hundred and fifty miles east of Pittsburg we overtook 
 said emigrant line, and were compelled to halt a full half 
 hour to enable it to get ahead of the chances for a collision. 
 A short run brought us again in view of our unwelcome con 
 sort, and another impatient halt was the result. And so we 
 continued until we reached the doomed (I came near writing 
 
 it d ) city of furnaces, fire, and bituminous brimstone, 
 
 fully six hours behind time. 
 
 At 4 o clock P. M., we started up the banks of the Alle 
 gheny river, crossed the Ohio about dusk, and found our 
 selves on a straight road running through a country of an 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 19 
 
 almost unbroken level. A furious storm was raging, the 
 rain came down in sweeping floods, and the winds raged 
 with an incessant fury that found few precedents within our 
 memory. About midnight, when everybody on board who 
 had a good conscience was asleep, or should have been, fate 
 made another desperate effort to stay my flight from the 
 home and associations of a long life, and the despairing citi 
 zens of a sovereign and independent State, Tom Scott, and 
 the fused monopolies of Camden and Amboy, and Pennsyl 
 vania Central included. She uncoupled the palace car in 
 which I reposed in slumbering innocence, from the rest of 
 the train, and the engineer being doubtless asleep, did not 
 hear the parting of the bell-rope, and the speed of thirty-five 
 miles an hour continued unchecked, leaving us standing upon 
 the track with the hurricane howling for admission at every 
 window ! In about thirty minutes the engineer discovered 
 his loss, and returned to repair damages. All hope of mak 
 ing up lost time before reaching Chicago was now abandoned, 
 and the locomotive settled down to a less alarming speed. 
 
 We reached the charred ruins of the City of Divorces 
 about noon the next day. As the Northwestern line through 
 Wisconsin had left without waiting for our connection, we 
 had five hours to stay for the evening train. I found it 
 impossible to realize that the still smoking mounds through 
 which I wandered were the debris of what, a few days before, 
 was one of the largest and most enterprising and wealthy 
 cities in the world. In an unbroken view of miles, scarce a 
 wall was left standing. The long lines of former streets 
 could only be plainly traced by the almost unscorched Nich 
 olson pavement that stretched through the endless arteries 
 of what had so recently been the proud and wicked com 
 mercial capital of the mighty and expansive West. Vast 
 heaps of machinery of cunning skill and matchless work- 
 
20 MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 manship, now disjointed and warped out of all usefulness by 
 the destructive element that had tried it in the ungovernable 
 furnace of fervent heat, were to be seen on all sides. The 
 front of some of the principal blocks of stores could be 
 traced by the huge iron safes, that still rested, in almost 
 uniform lines, where they had dropped through into the 
 ashes. For miles upon miles all the more palpable evidences 
 of a great conflagration had been removed. Of the scores 
 of churches, whose vain pomp of architecture had so recently 
 mocked the manger of the founder of Christianity, the 
 ruined walls of one alone remained. The horrid gaps in its 
 blackened masonry seemed grinning in mockery of its proud 
 founders, and its steepled dome leaned dangerously from the 
 Heaven its pride had so recently offended. 
 
 Reader, your imagination is unequal to the task of fully 
 contemplating the matchless ruins of Chicago. Pen and 
 pencil, with their almost divine magic, are feeble here. Think 
 of twenty-seven hundred acres of crowded warehouses and costly 
 dwellings, filled with all the productions and luxuries of a 
 highly stimulated commercial civilization, reduced to ashes 
 in a fiery crucible a hatful of alkali to each million dollars 
 and you have the facts in a convenient compass for contem 
 plation ! 
 
 At 5 o clock I started for Milwaukee. The track lies 
 along the western shore of Lake Michigan, that wonderful 
 body of fresh water that is more dangerous to vessels than 
 the Atlantic ocean, and whose wrecks are more numerous 
 than those of any sea in the world. AVe arrived in Milwau 
 kee about 9 o clock in the evening, and here fate made a last 
 desperate effort to divert me from the continuance of my 
 journey to almost solitary exile in the wilderness. A groat 
 wind smote the lake, and the steamer dare not venture out 
 upon the turbulent waters ! I staid all night at the Kirby 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 21 
 
 House, an excellent Hotel with all possible accommodations, 
 and kept by a fine looking landlord, and a gentleman of most 
 courteous dignity of bearing. His name is A. Kirby. Fare 
 only $2 per day. I paid my bill, so this is no " dead-head " 
 notice. 
 
 Milwaukee is a city of ninety thousand inhabitants, seventy 
 thousand being of German origin. It is situated on a high 
 bluff of the lake and has a secure harbor. It is solidly and 
 massively built of cream colored brick, and does an immense 
 business in grain, pork, beef, and general merchandise, and 
 is destined in a few years to become a great and notable city. 
 And yet in 1840, Milwaukee was refused a post office by the 
 government on the ground of not having inhabitants enough 
 to justify such a favor ! Think of this, ye dull natives of 
 Trenton, and go into your holes ! Your city is five times as 
 old as this place in the wilderness of Wisconsin, and yet you 
 have not stamina enough to build a mile of railroad, and you 
 are without a hundred yards of decent street pavement in all 
 your borders ! Avaunt ! 
 
 The Germans are a wonderful people in a new country. 
 Democratic in politics, and jealous of the encroachments of 
 government, these great elements of sturdiness in manhood 
 and pride in citizenship, constitute the Germans the most 
 desirable emigrants possible for a nation like ours. It was 
 Western German patriotism that went farthest in the support 
 of the government during the aristocratic slave-holding rebel 
 lion. Coming from a country where tinselled courts and 
 sensual potentates absorbed the greatest share of the profits 
 of honest toil, they could hold no sympathy with a treason 
 that intended to perpetuate a like condition of things in a 
 republican government. 
 
 It is a suggestive sight to stand at the depot and watch 
 the arrival of the long lines of emigrant trains as they 
 
22 MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 pour into Milwaukee. You see thousands of German mcn y 
 women, and children, dressed in the loose, coarse costumes 
 of their country, clamber down from the cars to await the 
 next trains toward their destination. The father and mother 
 have great burdens of bedding upon their backs, under the 
 weight of which they are compelled to stagger. The little 
 children follow after, each one with some household utensil 
 in hand, silent, wondering and contented in happy expecta 
 tion. And these people, dumb to our language, strangers to 
 our laws and customs, scatter themselves into the wilds of 
 the vast West, and in a few years hew out new States to 
 brighten in our confederate constellation. May Germany 
 ever have a free and full welcome to our shores. 
 
 The next evening, at 9 o clock, I went aboard of the large 
 and staunch steamer "Lac La Belle/ 7 or " Belle of the Lake," 
 bound for the Michigan shore at Grand Haven, directly oppo 
 site Milwaukee. The boat was advertised to leave at half- 
 past 9 o clock, and I found about fifty strong and rough- 
 looking men in the cabin, mainly wood-choppers, on their 
 way to the Michigan forests to fell pine trees for the hun 
 dreds of steam saw mills that line the shore of the lake from 
 Grand Traverse to Grand Rapids river, a distance of three 
 hundred miles. But the steamer did not leave her moorings 
 until near 1 o clock the next morning. All night long a 
 large body of men was engaged in rolling and carrying the 
 cargo on board, until not a foot of stowage room remained. 
 And even then thousands of tons of the produce of Wisconsin 
 farms remained in the immense freight depot awaiting ship 
 ment. The destruction of Chicago has temporarily doubled 
 the business of Milwaukee, and an immense amount of freight 
 has been thus diverted from the Michigan Central to the 
 Milwaukee and Detroit Railroad, on its way to your eastern 
 seaboard. 
 
MY NEW HOME IX NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 23 
 
 The bell finally sounded its parting salute, the gang-ways 
 were cleared, and we steamed out of the Wisconsin river into 
 the seemingly limitless waters of the great lake. 
 
 Michigan is the most treacherous of waters. It covers 
 nearly three times the surface of the entire State of New 
 Jersey, and is as capricious in its moods as an infant. You 
 start upon its waters under a cloudless sky, with a breeze 
 hardly sufficient to stir the curls (false) upon the neck of 
 beauty. In less than an hour you will see the wary mariner 
 scanning a cloud in the west no bigger than a man s hand. It 
 spreads with the rapidity of electricity, and the winds rush 
 from their caves to sport with the wave and its wrecks. The 
 vessel, which but a few moments before steamed along with 
 hardly preceptible motion, now begins to strain, and groan ? 
 and plunge, under the torture of the aroused elements. Soon 
 the cabin is a scene worthy of the admirer of the animate 
 picturesque. Men, women and children are pitched from 
 one side of the cabin to the other, and thrown about in a 
 manner that would be most ludicrously laughable, but for the 
 fact of there being no disinterested spectator to the per 
 formance. All are compelled to take a hand in the game ; 
 and the emptying of stomachs upon the floor, or into each 
 other s laps, is the rule, instead of the exception. The cuss 
 who could laugh at his associates in misery under such 
 circumstances, must be a trifle Satanic in his humor ! 
 
 The marine statistics of Lake Michigan for the year just 
 passed, show disasters to over one thousand vessels. She 
 rarely releases the dead from her depths of a thousand feet. 
 Her fretted waters have neither tides nor currents, save such 
 as her erratic winds bestow upon their surface. As I sit here 
 now, writing, in my little log cabin, the wind blowing a 
 partial gale, I can hear thundering surges upon her beach, 
 coming in landward through the dark and dense forests. 
 
24 MY NEW HOME IX NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 But, on the occasion of which I write, Fate seemed to have 
 withdrawn further protest against my departure, and yielded 
 to the proverb that "a willful man must have his way." The 
 lake was on its best behavior, and but a gentle ripple dis 
 turbed its placidity. I lay until daylight upon the cot of 
 my state room, disturbed only by the melodious snore of the 
 burly bison of a backwoodsman who bunked above me. Once 
 I reached up and punched him in the side with my umbrella, 
 but the monstrous heathen only grunted an anathema, and 
 snored the louder ! Pardon me, Rev. Sir, if I prayed for a 
 shipwreck to avenge me upon mine adversary ! 
 
 At daylight I arose, refreshed like a toad under a harrow, 
 and ascended to the deck. The high sandy bluffs of the 
 Michigan shore of the- lake loomed up dimly in the far 
 distance. A thousand sea gulls flapped their white wing* 
 against the placid waters, or sailed in the higher atmosphere 
 above us. Far inland, out of the majestic forests of green- 
 topped hemlock and pine, the crimson heralds of the coming 
 god of day began to kindle their resplendent fires. I stood 
 for an hour upon the deck, motionless and entranced, at the 
 marvelous glory of the scenic solitude. The waters, the sky, 
 the forests, illimitable in all, made me a worshiper of God 
 and his universe, though I marred not my holy devotion with 
 outward sign. If this is "infidelity," let the votaries in 
 temples made by hands excommunicate me without benefit of 
 clergy ! I have learned to stand most anything, for my 
 unworthy life has been at warfare with the most sacred 
 formulas that have become established in the minds of men. 
 
 About 9 o clock we reached Grand Haven, a town of over 
 two thousand inhabitants. It owes its existence and pros 
 perity to its lumber trade, and around and about it are thirty 
 steam saw mills, going night and day. The lake, here, is a 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 25 
 
 little over ninety miles wide, in a direct line to Milwaukee, 
 and we made the distance in about nine hours. 
 
 I soon took the cars to Muskegon, on my way north to my 
 new home. The distance to Muskegon is fifteen miles, and 
 we made it in sixty-five minutes, the new track being in 
 unusually good condition, and no one stoppage taking up 
 more than fifteen minutes to let off a passenger ! The last 
 census gave Muskegon a population of six thousand and two, 
 and yet the blackened stumps of the recent wilderness still 
 stand thickly in her principal streets ! Her saw mills are 
 her only source of prosperity. 
 
 Here I took another railroad for White Hall, a town of 
 eight hundred people, eighteen miles distant from Muskegon. 
 The speed on this road astonished me, notwithstanding I had 
 made one trip in my life on the Freehold and Farmingdale 
 road, in my once-loved State of New Jersey. By fastening 
 the vision firmly upon a tree, you could satisfy yourself that 
 the train was in motion ! 
 
 At the end of the first half hour I became alarmed, and sug 
 gested to the conductor a gentleman in very thin legs and 
 astonishingly large feet that he reverse the cow-catcher to 
 the rear of the train, for fear that a drove of cattle, that 
 started from Muskegon a few minutes after we did, might 
 run into us. The conductor looked me intently in the eye 
 for a few seconds, with a gleam of pity in his face, and passed 
 on with never a word. He was followed by a boy peddling 
 prize candy packages to the credulous passengers. Taking it 
 for granted that the lad was the inevitable newsboy of all 
 passenger trains, and forgetting for an instant my change of 
 place and circumstances, I requested him to bring me the 
 New York Tribune. The boy started, slightly changed color, 
 and responded with 
 
 " The what ?" 
 
26 MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 " The New York Tribune." 
 
 The lad drew a long breath and slid past inc. Two seats 
 to the rear he met the conductor, and I heard him whisper to 
 that functionary : 
 
 "That old feller over thar s crazy; he axed me for a New 
 York Trombone /" 
 
 The conductor then recited to the astonished lad my sug 
 gestion about the cow-catcher, and after that the twain never 
 passed me without a scrutinizing look, in which alarm was 
 blended with commiseration. 
 
 "White Hall found me at the end of all railroad connection 
 with Northern Michigan. The region beyond is an almost 
 unbroken extent of primeval wilderness for three hundred 
 miles. 
 
 White Hall is upon an elevated plain, and the situation is 
 a truly pretty one. Like all western towns, it is laid out to 
 limitless expansion. The founders of these embryo cities 
 seem to contemplate the no distant day when their now villages 
 will rival New York and Philadelphia in population and 
 wealth. Muskegon takes in many square miles, and the lots 
 in its only business street are held at 175 per foot. And yet, 
 in less than ten years from now, the valuable timber of this 
 region will have all disappeared, and the decay of the town 
 will then be as swift as its incidental prosperity. 
 
 The contrast between the lake shores of Wisconsin and 
 Michigan are very striking. From Chicago to Milwaukee, 
 eighty-five miles by railroad, are spread numerous beautiful 
 villages, handsomely built and adorned, and showing all the 
 comforts of Eastern civilization. The intervals are filled 
 up with finely cultivated farms, with large and comfortable 
 houses and barns. You cross the lake to Michigan, and it 
 seems like stepping from civil into savage existence. The 
 towns are simply lumber depots, without agricultural in- 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 27 
 
 terests. The roads from town to town are only avenues forced 
 through forests of unbroken solitude, with here and there the 
 log huts of lumbermen, but no signs of agriculture larger 
 than a patch for potatoes, or for corn sufficient to fatten the 
 solitary pig of the wild settler. And yet Michigan is an old 
 State, while Wisconsin but sprang into existence yesterday. 
 The valuable lumber lands of Northern Michigan have held 
 her back in the race of Western progression. Speculators 
 have monopolized these, and labor has been diverted from the 
 soil to the felling of trees and the sawing of logs. The few 
 have thus become rich, and the many are the slaves of a 
 system of labor that promises no benefits in the future. 
 
 At White Hall I hired a man for eight dollars to take me 
 to my destination, twenty-two miles distant. We at once 
 plunged into the depths of the hemlocks, whose dense growth 
 and thick green boughs almost shut out the light of day. 
 Not a bird, nor an animal, biped or quadruped, greeted our 
 vision for the first eighteen miles. Then followed at intervals 
 little clearings of from one to five acres, and the axe of the 
 new settler resounded from the gloomy recesses of the forests 
 in every direction. We had now entered the southern rim of 
 the promising " fruit belt" of Northern Michigan, and the 
 land of " great expectations" in the immediate future. About 
 every mile opened to our view a little peach orchard among 
 the blackened stumps, the trees of which had just been set 
 out, and ground was being prepared for others as fast as the 
 axe could dispossess the old forest trees of their freehold, for 
 the benefit of the new delicate exotic. 
 
 And now from the lofty, broad and level bluff of the 
 " Claybanks," the mighty lake breaks upon my vision, and 
 its green, limpid waters seem rolled out to immensity. A 
 sudden turn in the woods, and the majestic inland ocean is 
 again eclipsed from view, but its melancholy moanings still 
 
28 MY XEW HOME IX NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 touch the heart and the understanding with a pleasing sad 
 ness. At noon the last mile was overcome, and on ascending 
 a high elevation, a clearing of forty acres, encircled by mighty 
 hemlocks of the growth of centuries, was presented to my 
 gaze, and in the midst thereof stood the little log cabin of 
 < l My Xew Home in Northern Michigan." Johnny and little 
 Alice stood at the door, and, with the mutual exclamation of 
 <f Oh ! here s Pop," ran out to greet me. 
 
 I found my domestic fortress in these inhospitable wilds to 
 be a cabin of decayed and crumbling logs, upon whose roof, 
 from the outside, I could " lay hands " without theological 
 authority. But my wife, who is an extravagant and preten 
 tious woman, had, " unbeknownst " to me, and without 
 marital authority from the party on the other part, added a 
 50 addition to the north side of our ancient and time- 
 honored domicil. This little exhibition of wifely pride and 
 womanly vanity has probably blighted my political aspira 
 tions forever and a day. The less favored settlers have 
 booked me in their memories as a "rustikrat" invader upon 
 their simple tastes and habits ! I came here with visions of 
 a future seat in Congress ; but a woman has let Satan into 
 this paradise of anticipatory salary grabbing! 
 
 There is a little bit of romance connected with this cabin 
 of ours that will interest the general reader, and I propose to 
 relate it right here. About twenty years ago, when Chicago 
 was just struggling into cityhood, .there resided within its 
 comparatively sinless limits a young man named John 
 
 S . This young man had fallen in love with a young 
 
 woman of the vicinage, whose name is omitted by the gossips 
 of this legend hereabouts, and so, unfortunately, cannot be 
 embalmed in the immortality of this volume. For conve 
 nience sake we will call her Mary, a name ever sacred in the 
 recollection of many of us. Well, in due time Mary accepted 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 29 
 
 the overtures of her impassioned lover, and promised to join 
 teams with him in the burden of life. But even when the 
 " happy day " was but a few weeks in the future, his affianced 
 met a more attractively bedizened " feller " at a party, who 
 wore " store clothes " of the latest fashion, gold rings upon 
 his fingers, sang such affecting love songs as "Barbara Allen/ 
 "Lord Lovell," &c., and parted his bear-oiled hair in the 
 middle. The young man thus endowed by art and nature 
 laid siege to the heart of the simple country girl, and the 
 garrison, after a feeble resistance, surrendered at discretion. 
 In short, Mary " went back " on John, and was soon engaged 
 to his rival. The blow staggered our hero beyond recovery 
 Like Hamlet, Prince of Dunkirk, he became morose, moody 
 and possessed of a melancholy that bordered close upon 
 insanity. For clays he walked about 
 
 " With his doublet all unbrac d : 
 No hat upon his head ; his stockings foul d, 
 Ungarter d, and down-gyved to his ankles ; 
 Pale as his shirt : his knees knocking each other ; 
 And with a look so piteous in purport, 
 As if he had been loosed out of hell, 
 To speak of horrors." 
 
 Thus torn by the hopeless pangs of betrayed affection, he 
 wandered one day down to the estuary of the great lake, just 
 as a party of Indians, having disposed of the furs of the 
 winter s trapping, were about to return to their lodges in the 
 upper wilderness. He stepped into one of the canoes without 
 a word, seated himself upon a pile of blankets, and bent his 
 head in moody reflection upon his knees. The two chiefs of 
 the red men held a brief consultation in reference to the silent 
 intruder, which evidently resulted in accepting the situation. 
 In a few minutes the elder in command gave a signal wave 
 of the hand, the paddles dipped silently into the waters, and 
 
30 MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 the fleet shot out northward. On the fifth day thereafter, 
 several stoppages along the shore having been made to shoot 
 deer and broil venison steaks, the boats reached. Petite Point 
 an Sauble, one-half mile in a direct line from the cabin in 
 which I now am penning this little episode of local history. 
 The Indians, about thirty in number, had arrived at the 
 landing place of their reservation, and at once began to 
 unload the proceeds of their trading expedition. When the 
 last package was removed, the leader of the band touched our 
 hero upon the shoulder and motioned him to shore. He 
 obeyed without a word, for he seemed hopelessly bewildered 
 in mind, and as passive as a child. The burdens were soon 
 strapped upon the backs of the Indians, the chiefs bearing 
 their share with their followers, and the procession, in single 
 file, marched up the steep sand bank that still borders the 
 dense and sunless depths of pine and hemlock. 
 
 A march of twelve miles brought the party to the lodges 
 of their tribe, on the spot now occupied by the village of 
 Hart, the capital of this, Oceana county. Our hero remained 
 with his involuntary captors for about six months, during 
 which time, by his skill in the use of the few tools attainable, 
 he constructed a new council chamber for the tribe, and a 
 number of cabins for the chief men, of wonderful design and 
 workmanship. At the end of this time he signified his 
 intended departure. The tribe, (the remnant of the old and 
 warlike Chippawas, and numbering about eighteen hundred 
 souls), remonstrated in vain against this resolution. The 
 chief, Big Bone, even offered our hero his beautiful daughter 
 to wife, but the temptation fell upon unheeding ears. John 
 came into the wilderness to get rid forever of the presence of 
 the white woman, and the red one was not likely to win 
 him from his general abhorrence of the sex. A wife ! Xo, 
 none for John ! He was not to be Chicagoed a second 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 31 
 
 time. The forest fawn of the lodge of Big Bone, whose feet 
 were flat and broad upon the mountains, and in whose nose 
 glittered the bone of the lake trout, plied her native arts in 
 vain upon the petrified affections of our hero ! 
 
 It was while the dogwood was yet in its second blossom, 
 and the leaves on the maple had begun to crimson at the 
 
 touch of the early frost, that John S strapped his 
 
 blankets upon his back, shouldered his rifle, belted his axe 
 about him, and, followed by the wails and supplications of 
 these simple children of nature, struck out with long strides 
 into the silence of the surrounding forests. He took the 
 trail that led to Little Point Sauble, his landing point six 
 months before. The sun, enveloped in his evening robes of 
 gold and scarlet, with the encircling soft and fleecy clouds at 
 a respectable distance from his more dazzling glory, was half 
 hidden in the waters of the mighty lake, when our hero 
 reached the rounded eminence destined to be so long his 
 future home. He leaned his rifle against a huge pine of four 
 centuries growth, the sturdy stump of which still remains in 
 the " clearing, 7 three paces from my dingy window, mocking 
 decay with its resinous roots. He next proceeded to loose his 
 axe, and commenced lopping branches from a recently up 
 rooted hemlock. Of these he had soon formed a sufficient 
 shelter for the night. He then made a healthy supper upon 
 cold venison and parched corn, and laid clown to a sleep that 
 but few of the rich and great are capable of enjoying. 
 
 The sun, in russet mantle clad, had just begun climbing 
 the heights of yon high eastern hill [Shakapeare] when 
 our hero awoke. He offered up the first prayer probably 
 ever supplicated to God in this unbroken wild, and then pro 
 ceeded to the new duties of life. Day after day he cut down 
 the smaller trees, and fashioned them into the requisite shape 
 for his proposed dwelling. The half dozen lumbermen then 
 
32 MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 in this region gathered together to assist him at the " raising," 
 
 and before the storms of November set in, John S 
 
 found himself housed in a comfortable cabin, built by the 
 labor of his own hands, not a stick or a nail of which cried 
 out against the oppression or injustice of its founder. How 
 many of your eastern " West End " nabobs, in their heavily- 
 carpeted and gilded palaces, can show as clear a title to 
 humanity and Heaven as this? Don t all speak at once. 
 Lying is an abomination in the sight of the Lord ! 
 
 And here, for nineteen years, lived honest John S , 
 
 at peace with his own conscience and his God. In due course 
 of time, with hard labor at the saw-mills, which soon began 
 to appear along the lake shore, he was enabled to purchase 
 his forty acres, paying for the same the sum of $50. Of this 
 he had ten acres cleared, a small peach and apple orchard 
 set out and in bearing, everything around him lovely, and 
 he himself, but for one corroding memory, a happy and con 
 tented man. 
 
 Just about one year ago, a change came o er the spirit of 
 our hero. A rustic ball was held on the 22d of February at 
 the " Point," now a thriving settlement of four cabins and 
 one l( store." John was persuaded to attend. He entered 
 the charmed circle of dancers with all the shy timidity of a 
 youthful novice in the ways of civilization. When at last 
 he lifted up his eyes, in the courage of increasing confidence, 
 he felt himself entranced by a vision they encountered. 
 There, fair, fat, and forty, but as pale as the linen that 
 encircled her throat, with gaze fixed steadily upon his face 
 like one who has eyes, yet sees not stood the beloved of his 
 early manhood ! 
 
 I am not a novelist, nor a man of imagination, but rather 
 a sturdy delver in facts. Therefore, I propose to finish 
 this true history without garnish or the gloss of improbable 
 
MY NEW HOME IX NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 33 
 
 romance. As soon as his betrothed could recover sufficient 
 self-possession for the effort, she crossed the room to her long- 
 lost lover, took his hard yet trembling hand in her own, bent 
 her head upon his bosom, and sobbed like an unhappy child. 
 Of course, the wondering rustics were surprised at the strange 
 scene, but had too much native delicacy of feeling to smile 
 or giggle at that which they instinctively felt was sacred 
 from vulgar comment and intrusion. 
 
 The explanation which finally followed elucidated the fol 
 lowing facts : Mary, in expressing a preference for the 
 " store clothes feller," and permitting it to be hinted among 
 her associates that she was engaged to be married to him, had 
 only indulged in one of those arts of coquetry with which 
 so many young women foolishly try to test the devotion of 
 the one they truly love. The sudden disappearance of her 
 lover had awakened her to the wickedness of her conduct, 
 and she had known but transient gleams of happiness since. 
 A sister of hers had married one of a company of mill 
 owners at the Point, and she was on a visit there when the 
 strange meeting we have recorded was the result. The 
 parties, thus strangely re-united after twenty years of silent 
 absence, were married within the week, and that s the way 
 our hero came to sell his forty acres, with the " improve 
 ments," to us, for the sum of $725, and departed with his 
 bride to their old home in Chicago. Header of " blighted 
 affections," go thou and do likewise ! 
 
 Having disposed of the preliminary journey and its im 
 mediate incidents, I now propose to convey my readers to the 
 very ground of my new home, that they may stand with me 
 and mine and take a view of the strange solitude and its sur 
 roundings. The location is called Blackberry Ridge, from 
 the wonderful spontaneous growth and productiveness of that 
 fruit in this immediate section. Our cabin occupies an em- 
 
34 MY NEW HOME IX NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 inence two hundred and fifty feet above the level of Lake 
 Michigan, and is just one-half mile in a direct line from that 
 wonderful and mysterious body of water. The moan of its 
 troubled spirit goeth up unceasingly to the Infinite through 
 these almost unbroken solitudes ; and when the winds are 
 loosed in their fury, the melancholy dirge can be heard for 
 many miles inland. There is nothing that so lulls the soul 
 into sympathy with eternity, and absolves it from unholy 
 skepticism, as the voice of mighty waters in the waste and 
 desert places. In this glorious wilderness, by the shores of 
 this lonely inland ocean, not even the fool can say in his 
 heart, " There is no God !" 
 
 The " clearing," on the western verge of which stands our 
 cabin, comprises about one hundred and twenty acres. Of 
 this we have forty acres. Two other cabins are visible, di 
 viding with ours the cleared arena. Then we travel miles 
 before encountering other settlers. My nearest neighbor? 
 Charles Sessions, came in from the southern part of Michigan 
 one year ago. Next to him is James Gibbs, postmaster, on a 
 salary of 10 per year, and a Democrat. He came in as a 
 lumberman about a dozen years ago, felled pine trees for the 
 .saw-mills for about five years, and when these were pretty 
 well thinned out, Gibbs pre-empted a homestead of about one 
 hundred and sixty acres, and became a " settler." He came 
 from Pennsylvania. 
 
 The timber here is divided into what is called " hard wood" 
 and "soft wood." The former consists mainly of beech and 
 maple ; the latter of pine and hemlock. All this region, for 
 hundreds of miles, has been surveyed off into forty-acre tracts. 
 But very few of the settlers own over one of these lots. All 
 the land here was originally held by the mill proprietors, 
 speculators from other States, who bought vast tracts for the 
 immense pines which grew thereon. 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 35 
 
 These pine forests lined the eastern shore of the lake for 
 hundreds of miles, and hundreds of saw-mills have been en 
 gaged in their destruction for the past ten years. The waste 
 has been fearful. Between here and Chicago, a distance of 
 two hundred miles, but few pines are left in majestic suprem 
 acy, the lordlings of the forest. For ten years the " best " 
 have been annually marked by the spoilers, hewn down, and 
 cast into the saw-mills. But the huge hemlocks have been 
 passed by as worthless for commercial purposes. The new 
 settler alone makes war upon these. They are yearly cut 
 clown by thousands, left to dry for a season, and then the re 
 morseless fire is let loose for their destruction. I have seen 
 acres of huge trees, most of them measuring from ten to 
 fifteen feet in girth, set on fire and consumed that room might 
 be made for the plow. There is a hemlock " forty " joining 
 our location on the south. Seven years ago it was traded off 
 for an old horse, worth 20. It can be bought to-day for 
 300. If you had it near Trenton it would be worth over 
 $100,000. Next fall men will be engaged in cutting it down 
 for the sole purpose of giving its beautiful lumber to the 
 flames. 
 
 There is a singular feature in these forests of Northern 
 Michigan. One forty-acre tract will be covered exclusively 
 with hemlock. With hardly a perceptible gradation, the ad 
 joining forty will be entirely of beech and maple. And so it 
 will alternate for miles. The " soft " timber has a fertile soil 
 of sandy loam ; the " hard " has an admixture of clay and 
 lime, and is considered far preferable for agricultural purposes. 
 
 On the west and south our cleared circle is girded by hem 
 lock ; on the east and west the hard timber mainly prevails. 
 The contrast is very striking. The white, deep snow is en 
 circled on one side by the denuded giants of the forest ; on 
 the other, the dense, dark limbs of the evergreens prevail 
 
36 MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 over all the changes of the seasons. I often wander forth of 
 a moonlight night strangely brilliant in this latitude 
 entranced by the magnitude and silence of these forests. At 
 irregular intervals, amid the leafless wilderness of oak and 
 beech and maple, rises up the majestic pine, straight and 
 limbless for an hundred feet, crowned with a feathery helmet 
 of green, and towering in altitude fully one-third above all 
 its surroundings, presenting a weird and ghost-like appear 
 ance that requires a more capable pen than mine to fully 
 portray. 
 
 The density of these northern forests is surprising. The 
 trees grow to an immense height, and so closely together that 
 the sun seldom penetrates their foliage. Standing in one of 
 these clearings, and scanning the outlines of the woods, the 
 great trunks seem so to press upon each other that one would 
 deem it difficult for a cow to force her way into their depths. 
 From these clearings one rides for miles, along narrow roads 
 winding among the trees, and filled with stumps, without any 
 signs of life or civilization. There is one road leading north 
 from this neighborhood, that can be traveled sixty miles 
 without meeting a human habitation. And this is the general 
 face of the country, clear across this secluded State, from Lake 
 Michigan to Lake Huron, and three hundred miles north and 
 northwest to Lake Superior. You of the old and busy east 
 cannot begin to appreciate the utter isolation and loneliness of 
 this vast region, or that sickness of heart that, despite his 
 philosophy, will at times overtake the voluntary exile from 
 an older and more seductive civilization. 
 
 It commenced snowing here on the 20th of November, two 
 days after my arrival. For six long weeks it continued, with 
 almost unbroken violence, and in all that period the sun was 
 not visible for two hours, put it altogether. Five feet of 
 snow fell in December, and violent winds raged without in- 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 37 
 
 termission. On the 16th of the month in which I now write 
 (April) I came near perishing in a snow storm, having been 
 overtaken several miles from my cabin. On Sunday, the 
 21st, another fierce snow storm was hurled from the heavens, 
 and heavy icicles were formed at the eaves. One hundred 
 and forty days of unbroken sleighing have here marked the 
 terrible season, only now just fairly passing away. To-day, 
 April 28th, the boys are plowing, with patches of snow still 
 upon the fields. But there is a balm in the glorious atmos 
 phere ; the robin and the blue-bird are happy in our little 
 orchard, and we live in a faith that tells us that seed time and 
 harvest are not even here neglected of God. 
 
 But the ordeal to me this winter has been a fearful one. 
 My life has been passed in cities and amid the tumult of men. 
 For six months have I been imprisoned from all these, in a 
 cabin in the wilderness, without one single link holding me 
 to life-long associations. To step out from the rarely 
 traveled road was to bury myself in the snow-drift. There 
 was neither store nor tavern as a resort in which to relax the 
 terrible monotony. There is not a single church in all this 
 broad township of Benona, and not one drop of ameliorating 
 whisky can be obtained for even " medicinal 7 purposes. The 
 hardy pioneers here, who labor so hard and endure so many 
 privations, are, with one exception, temperance men, and 
 mainly members of the Order of Good Templars. 
 
 What I have carelessly written thus far has been at idle 
 intervals, without any regard to the harmony of connection, 
 or any caution against repetition. I had no thought of book 
 making then, and since that weakness, against the remon 
 strance of judgment, has taken bankrupt possession of me, 
 the assets must remain even in the condition in which they 
 were found. 
 
 I have been very hard at work for a month past. My own 
 
38 MY NEW HOME IX XORTHERX MICHIGAN. 
 
 hands have cut, planted, and covered four acres of Early 
 Eose potatoes, finishing the unwonted work on the 5th day of 
 May. We have fifty bushels more to put into the generous 
 . virgin soil of this yet untamed wilderness, and the ground 
 will be ready for the work to-morrow. Then come six acres 
 of corn, five of the little white beans of commerce, millet for 
 the kine, and many other things of minor import. To-mor 
 row we shall finish setting out our thirty-acre orchard, con 
 sisting of one thousand apple trees, three thousand peach 
 trees, five hundred quinces and plums, together with pear, 
 cherry, &c. We have been three weeks at this job, with a 
 half-dozen men to assist us. It will be a glorious sight in 
 a few years from now, when I am old enough to die, and life 
 has become a burden which a sensible man would desire to 
 lay aside for the unknown future of eternal life or eternal 
 death to see this thirty acres of red and white blossoms 
 blooming amid thousands of blackened stumps, and belted by 
 the encircling forest, giving its odor and its beauty from the 
 hand of God to the senses of man. It will seem strange to 
 most of my readers, this tale of southern fruit promise, away 
 up here in this northern latitude, by the mighty lakes, where 
 winter rages or lingers for fully one-half the year. And yet 
 there is no spot on all this broad country of ours where 
 peaches, apples, plums, strawberries, raspberries, and their 
 kind, come to more profuse and certain perfection than right 
 here in this circumscribed location of my new home in the 
 West Petite Point au Sauble, running fifteen miles out into 
 the dark, restless, and treacherous waters of Lake Michigan. 
 Five miles inland these fruits, apples excepted, will not grow 
 to production. It is the milder influence of the immense 
 body of water by which we arc nearly surrounded, that 
 makes this great difference of temperature. 
 
 My little cabin window, about two feet square, (blessed be 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 39 
 
 God, there is no worldly pride here to fret the souls of women 
 and deplete the pockets of men !) opens upon a scene of sad 
 and solemn beauty, which enlarges the Deity within us to an 
 approximate comprehension of the Deity beyond all visible 
 externals. The moon is full-fledged, and in this thin, pure 
 atmosphere, gives out a resplendent magnificence upon forest 
 and clearing that robs the sun and day of all their assumed 
 superiority, and makes the dullest observer akin to the spirits 
 of just men made perfect. O ye slothful servitors of Chris 
 tianity, in the whitened sepulchres of your city Sabbaths, if 
 ye would get nearer the Heaven you offend with your mock 
 eries, and further from the Hell upon which your feet daily 
 and willfully take hold, come out here and help me plant 
 potatoes in the daytime, and worship the living and the true 
 God through the w r ork of His hands as reflected in the moon 
 light of these vast solitudes ! It is so easy to be a Christian 
 here that there hardly seems to be saving merit in it. If 
 there be damnation beyond death, the city pursuers of wealth 
 will mainly agonize under the inexorable decree. No man 
 can be persistently wicked in the pure surroundings of 
 Mature. 
 
 Seventeen years ago the first white man attempted a busi 
 ness residence on the lake shore, within many miles of my 
 present location. Ira Minard, of Illinois, was the first to 
 take advantage of the great timber wealth of this large 
 county. He established a saw-mill at Stony Creek, an 
 outlet of Stony Lake into Lake Michigan, about six miles 
 south of my new home. A. E. Wheeler, of the State of 
 New York, a very worthy and intelligent gentleman, was the 
 agent of Mr. Minard in the enterprise. Roving bands of 
 Indian hunters held possession of the country, and not a 
 cultivated patch of ground could be seen from Grand Haven, 
 one hundred miles south, to Grand Traverse, one hundred 
 
40 MY NEW HOME IX NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 and fifty miles north. The second winter Mr. Wheeler was 
 here proved a very severe one, and the solitary Indian trail 
 that led to the trading post of Grand Haven was so blocked 
 with snow as to be rendered impassable. Previous to this, 
 the men at the mill used to make periodical trips to Grand 
 Haven for provisions, returning with the same strapped 
 upon their backs. On this occasion starvation threatened 
 the occupants of the two cabins at the creek. As the 
 dilemma became more serious, a trapper, a white man by the 
 name of Chapin, volunteered to go in his log canoe to Grand 
 Haven for supplies. He told Mr. Wheeler that if he were 
 disposed to trust him with the necessary funds, he was willing 
 to encounter the risk of the journey. The agreement was at 
 once made, and Chapin started on his perilous trip. The 
 lake was ice-bound for a quarter of a mile from its shore, 
 and the huge waves thundered incessantly against this jagged 
 and slippery barrier. Through dangers and hardships that 
 can scarcely be credited, the dauntless hunter fought his way 
 alone on the wintry waters to his destination. He procured 
 a barrel of beef, one of pork, together with a quantity of 
 small stores, and proceeded on his return. At the end of 
 two days of fearful labor and peril, his practiced eye dis 
 cerned a storm coming up from out of the west. He at once 
 turned the prow of his canoe against the ice-barrier of the 
 beach, and cut his way with an axe to the shore. He rolled 
 his provisions high up upon the sand and entered the forest. 
 With hemlock boughs he constructed a sort of shelter from 
 the terrible storm that ensued, and rolling himself up in 
 blankets, remained completely " snowed under/ for two days 
 and nights. At the end of this period, he regained his boat, 
 re-loaded his provisions, backed out of his ice canal, and in 
 a few days reached Stony Creek in safety, but in a state of 
 complete exhaustion. Mr. Wheeler told out into the horny 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 41 
 
 hand of the unselfish adventurer, twenty-seven hard silver 
 dollars, as a reward for this perilous service. The hunter 
 carefully counted and re-counted the dazzling coins, dropped 
 fifteen of them, one by one, slowly into his untanned deer 
 skin pouch, and forced the balance back upon Mr. Wheeler, 
 absolutely repulsing all the efforts of that gentleman to 
 induce him to pocket the remainder. Mr. Chapin now 
 resides at Pentwater, twelve miles north of here, and has a 
 comfortable home. He is a hale, hearty, honest old man of 
 nearly seventy years, with no stain of meanness or crime 
 upon his conscience. How would it have been with him had 
 he lived in cities ? 
 
 The success of Ira Minard, in the lumber business, soon 
 attracted the attention of other men of resources, and mills 
 gradually went up along the lake shore, at intervals of about 
 a dozen miles, from Muskegon to the northern head of the 
 lake, a distance of nearly three hundred miles. The land was 
 held by the Government, and each mill company purchased 
 thousands of acres, and the work of demolition began ; the 
 glorious old pine forests, as old as the Mosaic creation, were 
 assailed, night and day, by thousands of sturdy axmen, and 
 scarcely a semblance of their former glory remains in all this 
 region round about. The comparatively worthless hemlock, 
 and "hard wood/ 7 have alone escaped this crusade of " civil 
 ization." Steam mills have sprung up in the wilderness 
 further inland, and one of those near us has just completed 
 a contract to saw seventy-five million feet of white and 
 Norway pine for a company in Chicago. Three miles east of 
 us, Kearswell & Co., lumbermen from Maine, hold twenty- 
 five hundred acres of pine lands, now nearly denuded of 
 marketable timber, by seven years of incessant assaults of 
 hundreds of axmen. Their mill is a very large one, and 
 chiefly manufactures what is here called "siding," but in New 
 
 c 
 
42 MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 Jersey is known as "weather-boards." The amount they 
 annually cut up, with their marvelous machinery, staggers 
 belief. A huge log is cast into the terrible maw of the mill, 
 and in a few seconds the "siding" slides down an inclined 
 plane, perfect for use. It is mainly shipped to Boston, and 
 commands $70 per thousand feet. I wish my readers could 
 travel through this wild region in the early spring, and see 
 for themselves the millions upon millions of huge logs that 
 have been cut down and "skidded," ready for hauling during 
 the winter, and they would think that the whole world was 
 being supplied with lumber from the forests of Northern 
 Michigan. 
 
 The way this country was finally opened to agricultural 
 attempts may prove of interest to my few readers. 
 
 The land was originally purchased solely for its pine. 
 When denuded of this, it was considered worthless. The 
 mill companies who owned it were from other States, and had 
 jio other interest in Michigan further than to despoil her 
 grand old forests. Ten years ago the land thus despoiled was 
 offered for twenty-five cents per acre. A neighbor of mine, 
 William Worth, an emigrant from northern New York, was 
 offered a forty-acre tract adjoining his homestead, if he would 
 enter thereon and cut seventeen cords of " stave bolts" for 
 the owner. These stave bolts are cut from oak trees, for the 
 manufacture of barrels. Eight trees would have furnished 
 the required number of bolts, and these trees could have been 
 reached in any fifty square yards of the tract, and could have 
 been got out in ten days. But the offer was refused. Another 
 neighbor bought his forty acres for an old rifle, a powder 
 horn, and a pouch of buckshot. 
 
 The original settlers were chiefly the lumbermen who came 
 into the " pineries" for winter work. A few of these each 
 season became squatters, and reared up little log cabins. They 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 43 
 
 worked at the mills in the summer to get supplies for their 
 families, and many of them plied the ax half the night to get 
 a little "clearing" around the cabin. Then, with a borrowed 
 ox from a more prosperous neighbor, perhaps many miles 
 away, they would break up the yielding, sandy soil, and, 
 amid half-burned logs and stumps, plant a peck of potatoes, 
 a little corn, a few square yards of garden, and trust to 
 Providence for the result. To the surprise of these first ex 
 perimenters upon this seemingly worthless soil, the crop 
 proved astonishingly bountiful. For untold thousands of 
 years, Nature had been at work, in the air, in the snow, in 
 the water, in combining and secreting vivifying material in 
 the soil for the coming men, who were to make the wilder 
 ness blossom like the rose, and the waste places proclaim the 
 goodness of God toward all that trust in Him, and are patient 
 for his appearing. The field right here before my eyes, which 
 has been cultivated for seven years without return of manure, 
 and the half of whose surface seems taken up with huge, 
 charred stumps, last year produced two hundred bushels of 
 potatoes to the acre. Yonder hill top is luxuriously green 
 with its first clover, while the southern front of our cabin 
 holds a little orchard of fifty peach trees, which were four 
 years old last summer, and bowed down with fruit more 
 luscious than any that ever made a Jersey man smack his lips 
 on Jersey soil. Every fence corner, every stump, every open 
 ing in the woods that admits the sunlight of the heavens, is 
 beautified and garnished with strawberries, and blackberries, 
 and raspberries, and their kindred fruits, lavish in unpruned 
 Xature with a profusion that seems like sheer, reckless 
 wastefulness ; for neither bird nor beast and last and least, 
 man can diminish by their necessities or gluttony these 
 healthy luxuries of our glorious northern summer by the 
 mighty waters of the great lake. 
 
44 MY NEW HOME IX NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 And the moral wants of our people are just beginning to 
 be met. The first Sunday-school ever attempted for the 
 neglected little children of the settlers was organized last 
 Sunday. And who do you suspect is the superintendent of 
 this Sunday-school in the woods ? Tell it in Gath, publish 
 it in the streets of Askalon ! The superintendent is none 
 other than your humble servant ! How will that do for 
 high ? 
 
 It is night of the 20th of June. The moon is up in a 
 cloudless sky, and the weary winds have retired to rest. The 
 solemn religious silence of the surrounding forests is as pulse 
 less as death, save where the whip-poor-will utters his tireless 
 and monotonous calls. And this lonely bird of the night 
 stirs chords within the dim and silent wards of memory that 
 have long remained untouched in the reckless past. It is 
 now nearly fifty years since I last heard this bird of darkness 
 and solitude utter its harsh commands to flagellate the offend 
 ing " "Will," and well do I now remember the mysterious awe 
 with which its persistent repetitions filled my troubled little 
 heart. The scene was away up in northern New Jersey, and 
 I was a little bare-foot boy, who gave his fond mother a 
 world of trouble and anxiety. She is dead now, and that boy 
 is growing old and weary-hearted, far from her grave. 
 
 " No more, 
 But let us to our story as before." 
 
 It ought to be of interest to all our eastern readers to hear 
 how a wooded new country is brought under the dominion of 
 agricultural man. The first settler generally comes out with 
 an ox team, wife, and children. A tent is stowed in the 
 wagon, together with axes, rifles, and a few positively indis 
 pensable cooking utensils. The pioneers travel on, days, 
 weeks, and sometimes months before a location is selected. 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 45 
 
 Romance has no place in all their thoughts. Fertile land 
 and convenient water are the paramount considerations. A 
 spot is finally selected, and simple preparations for per 
 manence at once entered upon. The tent is pitched, and the 
 weary wife and lesser children are housed in their new home, 
 in most cases never again to meet with those with whom all 
 their years had been passed. The man and his stouter sons 
 now select trees of suitable size, and for the first time since 
 the world began to revolve upon its axle-trees, the startled 
 forest is awakend by the ring of the woodman s ax. When 
 the logs are properly prepared, the oxen drag them to the 
 selected site, and by patient toil, and manly and uncomplain 
 ing privations, a rude log cabin the forerunner possibly of 
 some future Chicago lifts its slightly majestic proportions 
 amid its wild and primitive surroundings. The " squatter " 
 having thus established his pre-emption right, goes to work 
 with a will upon a " clearing." An athletic and tireless 
 woodman can cut down an acre of trees in ten days. When 
 a few acres have been so far subdued, the trees are left to 
 season for a year, that they may yield the more readily to the 
 persuasive influence of fire. Abundance of all sorts of game 
 furnish food for the family during this period, a little patch 
 of corn, cultivated in some natural opening of the surrounding 
 forests, furnishing the needed concomitant of bread. 
 
 And here I will digress a moment to attack a popular 
 error. It is an accepted untruth that the railroad is the one 
 grand pioneer of civilization. Estimable old fogy of a 
 philosopher, or political economist, stand up and be corrected. 
 This little two-cent box of matches now upon my table is 
 worth all the railroads ever built, or now being conceived, in 
 wresting the wilderness from the dominion of solitude, and 
 the silent reign of nature, and the grand majesty of unin 
 habited space. Fire,^rc, is the monarch of civilization whose 
 
46 MY NEW EOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 sceptre sways the earth, to say nothing of that other place 
 that is theologically located a yet unmeasured distance beneath 
 it. Not a square mile of wooded land in all the fertile 
 sections of the great west and northwest could have been 
 reclaimed for agricultural purposes, but for this subtle 
 element, given unto us by the all-provident Creator. Let 
 Tom Scott, and the ghost of Jim Fisk, make a note of this. 
 
 The timber thus felled is called a " slashing." When it is 
 sufficiently seasoned, fire is applied, and then ensues a sight 
 worth all the election bonfires in Xew Jersey. The wind is 
 high, and the sheeted flame leaps and rushes like hell let 
 loose for a holiday. Every leaf, every twig, every limb r 
 every green bush, or creeping vine, that had decked or fes 
 tooned the dead and prostrate monarchs of the forest, is 
 lapped up by the hungry fires and consumed to ashes. With 
 unsatiated appetite, or rather with voracity maddened with 
 what it has fed on, the whirlwind of fire sweeps over the 
 bounds of the " slashing," and rushes onward into the sur 
 rounding wilderness. The startled deer breaks from hi& 
 covert, and the astonished eagle soars screaming upward into 
 the heavens. And when night comes down upon the scene, 
 it is only to add to the magnificent terror that seems a world 
 on fire. Thousands of monstrous pines and hemlocks, long 
 dead from the weight of centuries, but still erect by their firm 
 fastenings the skeletons of the forest cemetery are seized 
 upon by the insane fury of the fiery whirlwind. Up their 
 huge trunks it crawls and leaps, and flaunts its lurid banner ! 
 It seizes upon each limb that seems to stretch forth its help 
 less arms imploringly. And now look ! As far as sight can 
 penetrate, here is a Saturnalia worthy of all the demons of 
 destruction. The hoary trunks of the victims are all a mass 
 of glowing fire, and every limb is ablaze with a brilliancy 
 that fascinates the beholder, and throws an indescribable 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 47 
 
 glory by reflection upon all the surrounding green leanness of 
 the forest. Hark ! Booming through all the avenues of the 
 intensified senses, comes a sound like muffled thunder. A 
 huge pine has yielded to fate, and falls crashing amid its 
 compeers. Millions of sparks fly upward from the fierce 
 concussion, and soar upon the wings of the night high up 
 into the firmament. And so, boom ! boom ! crash ! crash ! 
 all through the night, at irregular intervals, the terrible con 
 flict rages until daylight modifies the fearful and indescriba 
 ble grandeur. I have tried feebly to describe what my own 
 eyes have beheld within a month past. I admit the failure 
 is a miserable one, and am willing that my enemies shall 
 make the most of it. 
 
 The fire of the "slashing" having fully exhausted the more 
 combustible of its material, the hardest of the work now 
 commences, for the " logging" is what the new settler most 
 dreads. The huge bodies of the trees lay prostrate amid the 
 ashy ruins and blackened stumps, the sole survivors of the 
 conflagration. These are simply charred around the surface. 
 The saw and the ax are now pressed into the service, and 
 made to perform their all-important part in the perfecting of 
 the work. The trunks are cut up into twelve feet lengths. 
 The log chain is fastened upon one end of these, and the 
 weary oxen are made to drag them to the place of execution. 
 By the aid of levers and "skids" these are piled up in 
 pyramids, frequently ten feet high. When this slow and 
 painfully toilsome process is completed, a favorable wind is 
 the opportunity for applying the torch. The numerous heaps 
 are soon in a bright blaze, affording a scene of grandeur at 
 night only inferior to the destruction of the lighter material 
 of the " slashing." The lurid fires light up the whole heavens 
 for miles around, giving an idea of the camp fires of an im 
 mense army. This work continues for days. Then the 
 
48 MY NEW HOME IX NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 windows of heaven are opened, and the dying embers of the 
 conflagration are slowly extinguished. The plow is next 
 called upon to perform its important functions. Where the 
 roots are lightest the ground is imperfectly broken up, and 
 the more delicate crops are sown or planted in little patches. 
 The potatoes are placed upon the unbroken soil, and covered 
 over with the hoe. The product of these is truly astonishing 
 in the yielding and congenial soil of northern Michigan. 
 From planting to gathering the first crop, they are frequently 
 left to struggle for growth, (intended by the care of man. 
 And yet the production is often at the rate of one hundred 
 bushels to the acre, large, mealy, and of surpassing flavor. 
 I have been in twenty-five States of the Union, but never 
 saw such fine potatoes as are grown here in this wilderness. 
 God is good in some way to all manner of people. 
 
 And so, from year to year, the new settler adds to his 
 acres, until whole States are wrought out of the waste places, 
 and a sturdy race of honest and patriotic men grow up to 
 counterbalance the effeminacy and wickedness of the old cities 
 of the east. But for this, ruin and decay would have long 
 since marked the gradual downfall of our great republic. 
 There is to-day more of the leaven of national salvation, 
 right here by the lonely shores of the mighty waters of Lake 
 Michigan, than in all the borders of all the cities of the cor 
 rupt civilization of the older east. The wild extent of our 
 country is the conservative influence that will save it from 
 the fate of the ruined dynasties of the old world for ages yet 
 to come. Poverty, oppression, and murderous discontent 
 have, in the yet untrodden fields of the mighty west, a way 
 to escape from enforced revolution, rapine, and bloodshed. 
 
 -V painful incident of pioneer life happened five years ago, 
 right here in this immediate neighborhood. During a storm 
 a huge tree had blown down in-ar the cabin of a settler from 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 49 
 
 Vermont. The next morning he took his saw, and accom 
 panied by a little son and daughter, aged respectively 
 six and four years, went forth to cut up the tree, which 
 had fallen upon his crop in the edge of the clearing. He 
 had sawed through the first cut, about twelve feet from the 
 large space of earth that had been carried up with the roots, 
 when the stump, relieved from the great weight of the body 
 of the tree, sprang back and resumed its original position. 
 The settler worked on for awhile, and then returned to his 
 cabin for his oxen. His wife met him with a careless inquiry 
 about the children. The man replied that he thought that 
 they had become tired of playing and had returned home. 
 The mother concluded that they had strayed out into the 
 dense wood, in search of flowers and berries, and pursuit at 
 once commenced. This was kept up for hours, when finally 
 the alarmed parents instituted a closer search by the fallen 
 tree. A loud shriek from the distracted mother brought the 
 father to the roots of the tree. And there they saw horrible 
 evidence of the fate of the little ones the edge of a small 
 apron protruding from under the re-settled stump. 
 
 The children had made a little play-house of moss and 
 chips in the cavity caused by the uprooting of the tree, and 
 when it sprang back had been crushed to death. The parents 
 still reside here, and the mother has carefully preserved the 
 little torn apron of her baby daughter, and the little straw 
 hat of her darling boy, together with the withered grasses 
 and wild flowers that had decked their play-house, as painful 
 mementoes of their sad fate. I have seen them,, and am not 
 ashamed to admit that I paid unto these records of a painful 
 tragedy the tribute of sacred tears. 
 
 There is a wonderful fact connected with the Michigan 
 side of the great lake, that points to the wisdom and good 
 ness of the Creator, in a manner so unmistakable, that it 
 
50 MY NEW HOME IN" NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 cannot fail to strengthen the Christian in his faith, and to 
 weaken the skepticism of the honest and intelligent doubter. 
 
 All along the eastern shore, for over two miles inland, are 
 steep and high sand-hills, studded with a stunted growth 
 of pine and hemlock. These hills have been thrown up 
 through the centuries by the action of the winds and waves 
 of the lake, and being of more recent formation, accounts for 
 the weak fertility of the soil, and the consequent dwarfage of 
 the forests. 
 
 It would be a work of utter impossibility to get the valuable 
 timber that grows beyond this belt, to the waters of the lake, 
 over the sand-hills intervening, without an expenditure so enor 
 mous as to forbid the attempt for ages yet to come, or until 
 lumber commanded a price difficult now to contemplate as 
 among the possibilities of the future. Under this state of 
 facts, all the vast region of which I have been writing would 
 be useless in its timber for the necessities of the civilized 
 centres in which it now finds so great and so remunerative a 
 market. 
 
 And now I will show wherein the hand of God is seen, in 
 the provision which so happily annuls the difficulty I have 
 described. 
 
 At average intervals of about fifteen miles, all along our 
 shore of the lake, little inlets enter the mainland, generally 
 from one hundred to one hundred and fifty yards long, and 
 from fifteen to thirty yards wide. Then their waters swell 
 out into beautiful little lakes, which run up for miles into the 
 valuable timber lands, and the most cunning engineer could 
 not have designed these more skillfully for the great need to 
 which they minister. These subordinate lakes are about six 
 miles in length, by two miles wide. And all around the upper 
 rim of this natural basin, large steam saw mills have been 
 erected, the fuel for which costs nothing, and the lumber they 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 51 
 
 yearly turn out is bewilderingly astonishing. An inlet, run 
 ning from ten to twenty miles still farther into the interior 
 of the pine forests, empties into the head of these smaller 
 lakes I have attempted to describe. So you see that when 
 the timber in the immediate vicinity of the mills is used up, 
 a seemingly inexhaustible supply remains to be felled and 
 floated down from a long distance inland. 
 
 The entrance from the great lake is dredged out to the 
 proper depth, wharfed up on either side, and large schooners 
 are thus enabled to enter, load, and depart to distant markets 
 with their cargoes. 
 
 Additional force is given to the argument that Divine 
 intelligence designed these marvelous conveniences for the 
 benefit of man, by this other fact which I now introduce for 
 the thoughtful meditation of both Christian believer and 
 skeptical materialist. 
 
 On the opposite side, or Wisconsin shore, one hundred 
 miles across from us, none of these little interior lakes exist. 
 And why? Because there are no forests of merchantable 
 timber there that requires them for a highway by which to be 
 floated to mill and market ! Reader, are not these links 
 welded into the perfect chain ? 
 
 While I think of it, it will be well here to introduce an 
 explanation that should have come in some distance back in 
 my careless and irregular description. 
 
 Some reader will think it strange, if my story of the 
 general fertility of Northern Michigan be of a verity, and 
 not of idle exaggeration, why is it that the land is not more 
 rapidly taken up by emigration, and devoted to the general 
 purposes of agriculture ? Why does it continue almost an 
 unbroken wilderness, while the colder and more inhospitable 
 climates of Wisconsin and Minnesota are sought by the great 
 army of emigrants ? 
 
52 MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 The point is very properly made, but very easily removed. 
 Of course the agricultural seeker of a home in a wild coun 
 try is very limited in his means, and depends upon imme 
 diate crops for sustenance. It takes a term of years in 
 Northern Michigan to cut down, burn, and get a forty-acre 
 tract ready for production, and the cost per acre is about 
 30, exclusive of the original purchase. And then those 
 wretched stumps last a generation, and are most difficult to 
 work among, either in preparing for or gathering in a 
 crop. 
 
 But the emigrant can cross the lake into the prairie states, 
 enter government land as a homestead, or other lands at a 
 light purchase, and clap the plow in on the very day he 
 becomes the owner. Can t you " see it ? " 
 
 To give my readers who are interested in things apper 
 taining to my new home a compact idea of its wild isolation, 
 I cannot do better than to state that it takes twenty-six 
 counties to make up the population necessary for our Con 
 gressional District, covering an extent of territory much 
 larger than the entire State of New Jersey, running clear 
 up to Lake Superior, and bending around in a tier of north 
 western counties to the Wisconsin line. Thank Heaven, it 
 prevents any candidate from "stumping" it, or whiskying 
 its wild red and white voters ! His term of two years would 
 be out before he could get through the district, and the 
 " back pay " would be all stolen before his " grab " could 
 come in. 
 
 There still remains in our county nearly two thousand 
 Indians, the remnant of the once numerous warlike tribes 
 that held all the Northwest previous to the inroads of civili 
 zation. They live on a reservation of two townships of the 
 most beautiful forest land in all Michigan. It is covered by 
 a growth of immense trees, mainly beech and maple, free 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 53 
 
 from underbrush; and as one rides through it he cannot 
 fail to become absorbed in contemplation of the magnifi 
 cent profusion of flowers and foliage, so grandly displayed 
 throughout this sylvan solitude. 
 
 These Indians are as good and peaceful citizens as are the 
 white settlers, who are beginning to crowd so closely upon 
 them. They have their little clearings for potatoes and corn, 
 but hunting is the main object of their existence. They 
 adhere to their old, original language, though the most of 
 them have mastered enough of the English for the ordi 
 nary purposes of intercourse with the whites. The State 
 prohibits, under severe penalties, the sale of whisky to these 
 people, and to this fact alone is due their quiet and peaceable 
 demeanor. 
 
 But woman will be woman, under all the dispensations 
 of fate and circumstance ; and dress without comfort, and 
 adornment without taste, mark the sex wherever a myste 
 rious providence suffers them to exist. The squaws of our 
 lake region spend every dime they can get for three-cent 
 finger rings, cheap, flashy ribbons, false hair not half so 
 beautiful as their own, and hump the small of their backs 
 as deformedly as do their Christian sisters of the East. In 
 fact, I will dare the assertion that I have seen at least some 
 red maidens here in the woods exhibit a disregard of taste 
 in their attire equal to that of a New Jersey belle, in its 
 monstrous departure from the true line of female develop 
 ment and shapely beauty. This may be doubted by most 
 of my readers, but I stand ready to put up .my money 
 on it. 
 
 With the relation of a single incident connected with the 
 present life of these Indians, I close this very hastily and 
 very carelessly written sketch of " My New Home in North 
 ern Michigan." 
 
54 MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 
 
 The principal chief of the Ottawas is one of the largest 
 and most powerfully formed men I ever looked upon. His 
 native name I have forgotten, but it is hard enough of pro 
 nunciation to strangle a Dutchman. He is designated among 
 the white settlers as Louie General. This chief had a favorite 
 pony of great speed, and his brother-in-law was the owner 
 of a similar animal. Several trials had taken place between 
 the two, but always with doubtful or unsatisfactory results. 
 At last a day was fixed for a final contest, which the tribe 
 attended in a body. These Indians are splendid riders, and 
 racing is their favorite amusement. 
 
 This time the race proved decisive. The horse of the 
 chief won the victory by a very close distance. This fact, 
 and the vociferous yells which greeted the result, aroused 
 all the vindictive passions of the defeated Indian. Instantly 
 leaping from his pony, he rushed toward the horse of his 
 brother-in-law, drew a long knife, and plunged it into the 
 bowels of the panting animal. 
 
 There was a pyramidal log pile blazing close by. The 
 chief gazed a moment upon his favorite, struggling in death, 
 then with one bound he reached the offender, raised him 
 in his powerful grasp at arms length above his head, and 
 dashed him upon the burning pile ! The top log, being 
 nearly burned through, broke asunder, and the victim dis 
 appeared in an instant within the cavernous furnace ! 
 
 For this deed of horror, Louie General was tried, con 
 victed, and sentenced for five years to the State Prison at 
 Jackson. 
 
 He had been incarcerated but a short time, when a con 
 spiracy among the more desperate of the prisoners came to 
 a head, in an attempt to overpower the guard and escape. 
 This would have proved successful, but for the daring 
 courage, and herculean strength of the imprisoned chief. 
 
MY NEW HOME IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN. 55 
 
 He threw his huge proportions in the only avenue of escape, 
 and knocked down every convict who attempted the passage. 
 Assistance soon came, and the effort was frustrated, only two 
 prisoners having succeeded in making their escape. 
 
 Louie General was at once pardoned by the governor, and 
 to-day is with his people. 
 
HOW THE "OLD SETTLER" SETTLED MY 
 POTATO BUGS. 
 
 IKXEW him by his swinging stride and his long rifle, the 
 moment he emerged from the old Indian trail into the 
 clearing. 
 
 It was the Old Settler. He came out from Northern 
 Indiana twenty years before, as one of the first lumber camps 
 formed in these wilds by the Chicago Saw Mill Company. 
 He managed, at the end of two years service in the camps, 
 to get forty acres of land for about the same number of dol 
 lars, put up a little log cabin with his own hands, cleared off 
 ten acres, and settled down in contented independence. 
 
 The honesty of this Old Settler would bear a heavy dis 
 count in any mart outside of Wall street. But there he 
 would be sure of sympathetic and congenial natures. He is 
 a Jay Gould, circumscribed in his genius by lack of material 
 for extended operations. The first spring I came into the 
 settlement, he sold me ten bushels of seed potatoes, at double 
 the market price, every one of which was frozen to the hard 
 est possible solidity. When a week later I discovered this 
 fact, and suggested that he make some sort of reparation, he 
 indignantly remarked : 
 
 " Why, stranger, do you take me for a durn d fool ! I m a 
 poor man. You wear store clothes and keep bosses, and they 
 say hereabouts that you are lousy with greenbacks. But you 
 musn t go for to try to put on style among honest folks here 
 in the woods. Pay you back that money ! Not if this indi- 
 
HOW THE OLD SETTLER SETTLED MY POTATO BUGS. 57 
 
 vidual knows hisself. Who can best afford to lose them 
 taters, me or you ? When I was up on the Manistee last 
 winter, a logging I licked a feller about your size, with one 
 hand tied behind me. 7 
 
 The logic of these remarks would not bear close criticism, 
 but the huge fist which the speaker swung around, in rather 
 careless proximity to my head, by way of emphasis, had a 
 mollifying effect upon my anger. I assured him I was 
 only joking. The Old Settler magnanimously accepted the 
 apology, invited himself to dinner, borrowed three dollars to 
 pay his taxes, and struck out again into the forest. And now 
 he visits me regularly, and in the absence of all neighborly 
 companionship, he is at times rather welcome than otherwise. 
 
 When the snows had all melted last Spring, and had 
 poured the last of their tributes into the treasury of the great 
 lake, and the genial days came out from the shadow of the 
 long, fierce winter, I set about my innocent agricultural 
 labors. 
 
 Albeit of an indolent organization, and a dreamer rather 
 than a laborer in the great problem of life, still I find 
 myself, in my new mode of existence, compelled to work in 
 self-defense. There is neither store, church, nor tavern, nor 
 any of the accessories of civilization within many miles of 
 my lowly dwelling. The winds sigh mournfully through 
 the forests ; day unto day and night unto night speaketh a 
 voiceless language of the past, in the solemn loneliness of 
 these grand old woods. The sounds of labor are few and far 
 between, and seem but the muffled echoes of the general 
 silence. 
 
 To avoid the saddening thoughts of death and eternity, 
 which such surroundings force upon the meditations of one 
 accustomed all his life to the remorseless din and struggles of 
 great cities, I went to work like another Abel, who was a 
 
 D 
 
58 HOW THE OLD SETTLER SETTLED MY POTATO BUGS. 
 
 tiller of the ground long before the ornamental potato bug 
 was mercifully invented. I prepared an acre for early rose, 
 cut, planted, and covered six bushels thereon, and all with 
 these soft hands of mine. The very first forenoon of this 
 work satisfied me that I was the discoverer of a valuable 
 acquisition to medical science. There is some secreted virtue 
 in a Northern Michigan hoe handle, that raises blisters in a 
 few minutes, as large as life, and twice as natural. 
 
 Rapacious quack, I have patented the discovery. The 
 subscriber is too smart a Jersey Yankee to make public " a 
 great blessing to mankind," without the preliminary caution 
 of securing the profits. 
 
 Well, to make a short story long, my potatoes grew up out 
 of the furrow, drank in the air and the sunshine, and I was 
 happy in the consciousness of rewarded skill and industry. 
 No fond mother ever so watched over the dawning beauty of 
 her first-born, as did your servant, beloved reader, over the 
 developed glory of them taters ! Alas, for the cruel sequel ! 
 One day 
 
 The bugs they came down, like wolves on the fold, 
 And eat of my vines all their stomachs could hold ! 
 
 It was at this fatal juncture that my evil genius, the Old 
 Settler, emerged from the forest, and came upon the scene, 
 as related at the opening of this history. Coming up to 
 where I was sitting moodily upon a stump, feeling like 
 Marias at the ruins of Carthage, only more so, his keen eye 
 took in the situation at once, but his diplomatic caution 
 suggested the disguise of an inquiry : 
 
 " What mout the matter be ?" 
 
 " Look at what was, only yesterday, the most beautiful 
 potato patch in the settlement. In forty-eight hours from 
 this it will be a sandy, herbless waste." 
 
HOW THE OLD SETTLER SETTLED MY POTATO BUGS. 59 
 
 " Bugs, eh ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Is that all ? Why, stranger, you can kill every blasted 
 critter of era, sure as shootin , before 9 o clock to-morrow 
 mornin ." 
 
 In the hour of despondency, the feeblest support gives 
 hope a ray of confidence. I grasped with gratitude the hand 
 of the Old Settler, and eagerly inquired how the work of 
 extermination could be effected. 
 
 "Mister," said he, "you re a new beginner, and don t 
 know much about farmin . But you re a clever feller, as far 
 as I ve seen, and I m willin to give you my sperience. Go 
 and get a bushel of fresh lime, what s just outen the kiln. 
 Pound it up as fine as powder, and early in the mornin , 
 when the dew is thick, dust them are vines all over, and by 
 noon there won t be a durn d live tater bug in the hull 
 patch." 
 
 With a gush of feeling that uprooted all my previous pre 
 judices, and flushed tearfully in my eyes, I again grasped the 
 hand of the kindly old man, with a mental oath of eternal 
 friendship; hitched up " Prince," and drove like Jehu, the 
 son of none, to Stony Creek, eight miles distant ; got back at 
 dusk with the lime, and worked and sweated all night in 
 reducing it to powder. I stole out exultingly in the early 
 grey of the morning, and gave a magnificent dusting to the 
 whole patch ! 
 
 My triumph was of the kind supposed to be loved by the 
 gods, for it died young. Even as I waited and watched, the 
 dust began to seethe and bubble, and a smoke steamed up, 
 and the vines squirmed, and writhed, and soon lay prone 
 upon the ground ! 
 
 " Fine arternoon," exclaimed the Old Settler, as he strode 
 into the patch where I was contemplating the ruins. 
 
60 HOW THE OLD SETTLER SETTLED MY POTATO BUGS. 
 
 I looked in the man s face sternly for a full minute, expect 
 ing to see him quail in the consciousness of guilt, in full 
 sight of the injury he had done me. But the steel blue of 
 his eye remained unclouded with shame, as he observed, in a 
 satisfied tone : 
 
 "Well, stranger, you see the lime has cleared the kitchen. 
 Bugs all dead, I b lieve ?" 
 
 Yes," I bitterly rejoined, " and vines, too. Did you know 
 it would kill the vines ?" 
 
 " Why, of course I know d it would kill the Waters. Any 
 durn d fool, who had the sense he was born with, oughter to 
 know that! I>ut then look at the satisfaction of earcumwentin 
 the cussed bugs!" 
 
 I here tightened my grasp upon the hoe handle, set my 
 teeth hard, and breathed determinedly. But a spirit of 
 Christian forbearance came in time to save me from the con 
 templated violence. I thought of the feller he had licked 
 up on the Manistee, and grinned horribly a ghastly smile as 
 I lifted my eight-dollar beaver from my head, and handed it 
 to the Old Settler with a bow, and the exclamation of 
 
 " Take my hat !" 
 
 To my surprise and consternation, the matter-of-fact nature 
 of my tormenter seemed to take the offer as of good faith, 
 and as a reward for acceptable service rendered ! He stretched 
 forth his long muscular arm, and before I could withdraw 
 the offer, he had it safely in hand. He then lifted his own 
 rimless, greasy, dilapidated " slouch" from his head, tucked 
 it under his arm, put my "pride of New York" on his 
 shaggy nob, and looked happy. He soon took it off, examined 
 with pride and satisfaction the beautiful finish of the interior, 
 replaced it upon his head, and spoke thus : 
 
 " Thank you, mister. This is the fust present I ve had 
 this many a year. Some of the folks here in the woods 
 
HOW THE OLD SETTLER SETTLED MY POTATO BUGS. 61 
 
 think you are a man of too big feelin for sich as us. IVe 
 always found you to be a clever feller, without a bit of the 
 gentleman about you, and I ll stand up for you while there s 
 a hemlock tree on Point Sable, or a ten-pound pickerel in 
 Bear Lake." 
 
 Thus leaving his sense of gratitude to console me in his 
 absence, the Old Settler struck out toward the forest, in 
 the direction of his cabin. On reaching the top of the hill, 
 he halted for a moment, again removed my new hat, again 
 scrutinized the beautiful interior, smoothed the body affec 
 tionately with his coat sleeve, replaced it, and was soon lost 
 to sight, and not particularly dear to memory. 
 
THE FIRST DEATH IN OUR LITTLE SUNDAY 
 SCHOOL. 
 
 HE was such a very little fellow, and so delicate in ap 
 pearance, and so bright, and kind, and gentle, and 
 loving, that I first wondered how it happened he was a boy. 
 As this conundium was insoluble in human philosophy, I 
 next spurred my ethical curiosity into another phase of 
 unprofitable speculation. 
 
 "Why was a man child so etherial so good so almost 
 angelic in soul and body permitted to be born in a cold, 
 inhospitable wilderness, where mortals of the coarsest and 
 the hardiest texture, who had never known luxury, and in 
 consequence felt not its privation, alone could live without 
 bemoaning a fate only preferable to exile, or involuntary 
 imprisonment ? " 
 
 This surmise, after turning it around into all moral aspects 
 possible to an acute imagination, also eluded a satisfactory 
 verdict, and was dismissed on its own recognizance. 
 
 The plain, hard fact alone remained, clearly defined upon 
 the background of impertinent causality, that little Johnny 
 Errickson, first son to a rude Norwegian emigrant, had been 
 born, five years before my advent in that region, in a primi 
 tive little log cabin, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, 
 and tliat an old Ottawa squaw did the midwife honors on 
 the occasion. 
 
 And Andrew Errickson, the father, was killed on the 
 morning of that same day by the vengeful limb of a patri- 
 
FIHST DEATH IN OUE LITTLE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 63 
 
 archal pine tree he had mercilessly hewn down for the maw 
 of a saw mill. It was believed by the few white settlers of 
 the vicinage, that the sad fate of the father had hastened the 
 advent of the infant some weeks in advance of the natural 
 law in such cases made and provided. The shock to the 
 mother, so suddenly and tragically bereft of her young 
 husband, and left alone among strangers in a strange land, 
 is supposed to have forestalled the event in manner as here 
 written. 
 
 Be that as it may, the hard fact remains, that the dead 
 father and the new born nurseling lay upon the same bed 
 on the morning of the funeral. 
 
 That little Johnny was thus hastened into this breathing 
 world, may account for that nervous delicacy of organization 
 to which I have referred, and the manifestation of which 
 wrought within me such a painful and ever pressing interest 
 in the child, when I had learned the simple facts of his brief 
 being. 
 
 When we organized our little Sunday School here in the 
 forest, on a bright Sabbath in June, 1872, Johnny and his 
 mother made two of the nine human creatures in attendance. 
 The wicked writer of this w r as made superintendent, and his 
 Christian wife was the only teacher, a position which she 
 holds unaided to this day, January 1st, 1874. 
 
 Johnny was but five years of age ; and I never looked 
 upon those great blue eyes, so full of strange, wondering 
 inquiry, and that thin, pale face, in which the dark veins 
 were so plainly visible in all their tracery, but the conviction 
 came uppermost that his little life would be but a brief 
 exhalation of its morning. 
 
 Of course the child could not read when we opened our 
 little Sunday School by the waters of the lonely lake, in the 
 faith that it would in time become as the voice of one crying 
 
t>4 FIRST DEATH IX OUR LITTLE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 in the wilderness, " Prepare ye the way make His paths 
 straight ! " 
 
 But he became a scholar, walking a long way through 
 the thick woods every Sabbath, never failing to be present 
 until lie died ! 
 
 It was wonderful to see how intensely the little fellow 
 devoted himself to his letters, and how soon he mastered 
 them. I really don t think it was over eight weeks before 
 the pale, sad-faced child recited to us, scarcely missing a 
 word, the whole of the Lord s Prayer. And after that a 
 Sabbath never passed in which he did not give us a half 
 dozen verses from some portion of the Scriptures. And 
 how his little face beamed with joy, and happiness, and all 
 that sort of thing, when our commendation rewarded his 
 proficiency ! 
 
 The widow and her son were very poor, and Johnny 
 would pick berries in their season, and carry them to the 
 lumber camps for sale, and then run back through the forest 
 patl;, as fast as his little legs could carry him, to give his 
 mother the few pennies he had thus gained. 
 
 I remember one Saturday afternoon in the early summer 
 of last year, that Johnny went down to the saw mill at the 
 Point, with his little basket filled with wild strawberries, 
 to dispose of to the hands. As he was about to return, the 
 proprietor, a coarse, bluff, but kindly man, chanced to come 
 out of his cabin, and meeting the lad, accosted him thus : 
 
 " Hello, Johnny, you re the very boy I wanted to see ! 
 I expect some company to-morrow, and I want you to get 
 up early in the morning and pick me five quarts of straw 
 berries. I believe you re an honest little chap, and I ve got 
 a new silver quarter of a dollar in my pocket, and I will 
 pay you right now in advance." 
 
 The eyes of the child glistened witli delight, and in his 
 
FIRST DEATH IN OUR LITTLE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 65 
 
 excitement he threw down his basket, as though it encum 
 bered his movements, and ran with all his might toward 
 the outstretched hand that held the shining treasure. 
 
 It was doubtless the first silver coin the poor boy had 
 ever seen, but it had hardly touched his eager palm, when 
 the sunshine went out of his face, and his eyes were suffused 
 with tears. The flash of a sudden thought had wrought the 
 change. 
 
 He held out the bright temptation toward the hand from 
 which he had just received it, and said: 
 
 " Xo, sir ; I cannot pick berries to-morrow. It is Sun 
 day." 
 
 " Why, Johnny," exclaimed the mill owner, with a laugh, 
 (for no one had respected the Sabbath in those parts, up to 
 the time of our little school,) when did you get this foolish 
 thing in your noddle ? Last summer you used to pick us 
 berries every Sunday, and nobody ever thought anything 
 of it." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said the child, " but I didn t know it was 
 wicked then. But I go to Sunday School now, and can read, 
 and the Bible says we must remember the Sabbath day to 
 keep it holy." 
 
 " Nonsense," said the man, in a slightly impatient tone, 
 " don t let those folks who have come in here from the East 
 put such stuff in your head. Johnny, your mother wants 
 this money bad enough, and it is your duty to earn it for 
 her, Sunday or no Sunday." 
 
 A hesitating look began to creep into the child s face, for 
 the man refused to receive the money back. 
 
 The boy was thinking of his mother. The contest went 
 on. 
 
 The struggle seemed unequal, with hard poverty and a 
 
66 FIRST DEATH IN OUR LITTLE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 little child on one side, and what appeared to his young eyes 
 as wealth on the other. 
 
 " Not by powei*, nor by might, but by my spirit, saith the 
 Lord!" The hesitation of the child was but momentary. 
 He dropped the coin in the sand at the feet of the tempter, 
 recovered his basket, and struck into the dark woods on his 
 homeward path as fast as his little legs could carry him. 
 
 He seemed to feel the danger of looking back. Reader, take 
 warning ! 
 
 And this was the first visible victory of our little Sunday 
 School in the wilderness. Let strong Christian men and 
 women never forget the day of small things. 
 
 I think I told you in the beginning that this child must 
 die that his brief dark morning would be his all of life. 
 It is the coarse and the brutal who live out all their days. 
 This is true. And yet, perhaps, it were better had I left it 
 unwritten here. 
 
 In the early September the dreaded scarlet fever, so fatal 
 in our high latitude, pushed its annual visitation into our 
 secluded settlement. Nearly all who were smitten died. 
 
 It was Sunday, and one of those soft and beautiful days 
 that are only in the fullness of their glory in the solitude 
 of the untrodden places. Johnny Errickson came not to 
 school. 
 
 And then I looked at the little bench on which the child 
 used to sit, his pale lips moving over his lesson with a 
 nervous intentness painful to behold, and I knew that his 
 place would know him no more forever. 
 
 When the night came, and the voice of the whip-poor-will 
 was alone heard in the silence, I started for the cabin of the 
 widow, which was about two miles distant. 
 
 I found three or four hard featured men, and about the 
 same number of uncouth but tearful women present when I 
 
FIRST DEATH IN OUR LITTLE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 67 
 
 lifted the wooden latch and entered. The little sufferer lay 
 tossing upon the bed, starting occasionally from a half doze, 
 and throwing his arms about wildly. His face was scarlet, 
 and swollen. His mother sat by the bedside, her face buried 
 in the clothes. She was silent, but her heart-beats were 
 audible to those nearest her. 
 
 At last the child feebly raised his head from the pillow, 
 and said : 
 
 " Mother, it is all dark. Let me take hold of your 
 hand." 
 
 The wiiow took the child s hand in her own, and the hot 
 tears dropped, one by one, upon it. 
 
 " Mother, what makes you cry so/ 7 said the child, hoarsely. 
 " God won t let me die, mother ; I am so little." 
 
 He laid down his head again, and for a few moments was 
 so still that we thought jhe had gone to sleep. 
 
 Suddenly he opened his eyes, a glad smile was upon his 
 face, he clapped his thin hands two or three times together, 
 and exclaimed : 
 
 " O, mother, it is all light again now ! And see ! the 
 room is full of dear little children, all dressed in white ! 
 We will have a bigger Sunday School now, mother O ! ever 
 so much bigger won t we, mother ?" 
 
 Tears rolled down the cheeks of every man present, and 
 the suppressed sobs of women filled the room. 
 
 The sufferer was again silent, but I knew by his shortened 
 breathings that Death had entered the room, and that his 
 skeleton hand was outstretched for the child s life. 
 
 Five minutes had elapsed, and the boy still remained 
 motionless. His breathing became more and more feeble. 
 
 All at once he turned over on his side toward his mother, 
 opened his eyes slowly, and with an effort. Then, with a 
 faint smile upon his face, he whispered : 
 
68 FIRST DEATH IX OUR LITTLE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 " Mother, your little boy s work is all*done, and now he 
 is tired, and will go to sleep." 
 
 I stepped softly to the bedside, and bent over the boy. 
 His eyes were still open, but the life had left them. The 
 spirit of little Johnny Errickson had passed over the dark 
 river into the beautiful land of everlasting love. 
 
 I turned to the mother, and said : 
 
 " It is best as it is. Johnny is dead." 
 
 A wail of agony went out of the heart of the mother, as 
 she knelt down and kissed the brow of the dead. 
 
 He was her only son, and she was a widow. 
 
 Then came a voice that was softer than silence, and said, 
 (( Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the King 
 dom of Heaven." 
 
DARWINISM VINDICATED AND 
 CONFIRMED. 
 
 I HAVE always thought, since my giant intellect became 
 more gianter by study and observation, that the Bible 
 account of the creation of man was too absurd a tradition 
 for any mind that had outgrown childish credulity, and laid 
 aside its infantile books about Jack and his Bean-pole, and 
 kindred stories, with which our good grandmothers used to 
 win us to their feet, in the almost forgotten winter evenings 
 of the long ago. But in the absence of any counter- 
 convincing theory, emanating from a philosophic mind of 
 unquestioned acuteness, and of moral respectability, I was 
 compelled to keep ignoble silence upon a momentous subject 
 that I could not credit, and yet unable to controvert. 
 
 The conscientious reader he who desires to believe right 
 upon a great religious question, and yet has no philosophic 
 evidence to point the way from doubt into belief can alone 
 appreciate the joy that kindled its radiant delight in my 
 soul, when Charles Darwin appeared with his monkey before 
 the footlights, and holding it up by its prehensile tail, 
 exclaimed to his audience : 
 
 " Behold one of your intermediate ancestors ! ! ! " 
 To say that I was delighted beyond all facility of expres 
 sion, at this happy solution of the question that had so 
 troubled me for years, is but a feeble way of announcing the 
 satisfaction I derived in thus being able to claim the cunning 
 little creature of the primitive village show tent as a man 
 and a brother ! 
 
70 DARWINISM VINDICATED AND CONFIRMED. 
 
 Pecuniary considerations, of too delicate a nature for more 
 explicit public explanation, alone restrained me from the 
 immediate purchase of the coveted volumes in which the 
 monkey idea was socially and so satisfactorily elucidated. 
 
 But I was so fortunate one day, during an idle visit to 
 that pernicious school of theological superstition, the "Young 
 Men s Christian Association," of the city of Trenton, to pick 
 up a newspaper, and therein I read an extract from the Book 
 of Darwin, in which it^was shown that man was developed, 
 through ages of progression, from a rather shaky sort of 
 jelly at the bottom of the ocean ! This watering of our 
 common stock proved the genius which conceived the idea, 
 and has ever since found industrious imitators, of which the 
 late James Fisk, and his worthy living executor, Jay Gould, 
 are the happiest exemplars. 
 
 Finding that the water cure had drowned out the Bible 
 fallacy of the " dust of the earth," in regard to the " origin 
 of our species," I had a foundation upon which to rest my 
 own lever, for the further overturning of the delusion of the 
 pious, and misplaced faith of the weak and credulous. 
 
 And so I set my own active and investigating mind to the 
 task of discovering cumulative testimony to brace, with addi 
 tional strength, the theory that seemed so firmly based upon 
 the great original principle of jelly. 
 
 The first thought that came to my assistance was one that 
 might have escaped ordinary observation, because it was 
 right under the nose, instead of being reachless, under the 
 great depths of the ocean. The philosophic Darwinian, as a 
 rule, is apt to despise the surface, and boldly dives to where 
 there is neither seeing nor hearing. The dullest delver can 
 grasp superficial facts. The real Darwinian brushes such 
 aside, and with his long oyster tongs, dredges up the jelly 
 from the bottom. I am but a freshmen of the class, a 
 
DARWINISM VINDICATED AND CONFIRMED. 71 
 
 neophyte for the honors, and this is why I stood at the vesti 
 bule of science, and picked up the crumbs that had been 
 swept out, unrecognized, from the Darwinian table. 
 
 But to the thought from which I am beginning to stray. 
 
 In one of the instructive books of Charles Dickens, there 
 is a person named Jellyby. How came that person so named, 
 and what is the inference of her ancestry ? The intelligent 
 reader at once anticipates the point. The original progenitor 
 of the Jellybys was, in all probability, the first of the human 
 species ! Developed from a jelly what more natural than 
 that he should name himself after the element of his origin ? 
 This deduction is irresistible as much so, let me diffidently 
 add, as any drawn by the great mind of which I am only a 
 disciple. 
 
 In further pursuance of this logical train of reasoning, I 
 remembered that Shakspeare, who comprehended every phase 
 of human nature, describes one of his characters as almost 
 
 " Distilled to jelly by the act of fear." 
 
 This proves that the developed man was so frightened that 
 he was almost dissolved back to his original elements ! 
 
 And again Why, when people become emaciated and 
 weakened by dangerous illness, is jelly given to them as food 
 appropriate to such feebleness ? Because it is drawing from 
 the fount of life to renew and strengthen the decline of that life ! 
 
 These few incidents must suffice for the special point of 
 illustration in view. Space, and not lack of material, demands 
 this brevity. And now for the positive and tangible facts 
 that settle the question beyond controversy or criticism. 
 
 Man stands with one foot upon the bottom of the ocean, 
 and the other upon the surface of the earth, as developed 
 from a jelly to a human being. Now mark how, by easy 
 stages, the wonderful transition was effected. 
 
72 DARWINISM VINDICATED AND CONFIRMED. 
 
 We will assume that the first stage was from a jelly to a 
 clam. Hence the origin of the word clamorous, when we 
 become impatient for a result. Then the jelly-clam, begin 
 ning to get the hang of the thing by a dimly developed 
 instinct, or mind, took a more lively stride, and clamed its 
 way into a crab, thus advancing towards its perfect state, as 
 a creature that can live both upon the water and the land. 
 In support of this changed state in the progress of develop 
 ment, I need only adduce the fact, that in the language 
 handed down to us from the remotest antiquity, a man with a 
 contradictory nature is said to be at times a " little crabbed ! " 
 
 And now the jelly-clam-crab takes a rather wider depart 
 ure, according to his increased strength and intelligence, 
 crawls forth upon the land, and suns himself as an alligator! ! 
 Hence it is that the proud son of Kentucky, impelled by an 
 instinct without scientific knowledge, proclaims himself, 
 " half horse and half alligator ! " 
 
 But it is unnecessary to prolong these facts by furnishing 
 the additional links that connect man with his creator, the 
 gelatinous substance that oozes from the bed of the ocean. 
 He who denies the Darwinian truths I have already 
 advanced, would not believe though one arose from the 
 asylum. 
 
 I am not disposed to rest here, however, for there is 
 another field in the philosophy of development, that even 
 the acute mind of the author of the " Origin of the Species" 
 has failed to discern. I mean the origin of the celestial 
 bodies. It may seem like ingratitude for a student to out 
 strip the master to whom he owes so much, but the claims of 
 science are superior to the conventional requirements of 
 friendship. 
 
 " How came the stars of the firmament in their exalted 
 places, and the sun as master of the celestial situation ? " 
 
DARWINISM VINDICATED AND CONFIRMED. 73 
 
 I answer this seemingly triumphant conundrum, with a 
 single word : 
 
 LIGHTNING-BUGS ! ! 
 
 In the beginning a sufficient number of these wonderful 
 insects were commanded to develope, to attain the grand 
 purpose contemplated by Nature. The first stage of pro 
 gress was those false meteors that occasionally blaze in the 
 lower firmament, and disappear from our sight. When the 
 ultimate object of their advancement toward perfection was 
 achieved, behold the stars of heaven! One old he fellow, 
 more ambitious than the rest, kept on developing until 
 he became the sun ! 
 
 And thus ends the harmonious perfection of the Darwinian 
 theory, in a blaze of glory ! 
 
 Comment is unnecessary. 
 
 E 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 fTIHE incidents of this our true story, date back over a 
 JL century ago. 
 
 On the morning of the 13th of September, 1759, the flag 
 of France waved above the ramparts of Quebec for the last 
 time. The night previous, the army of the heroic "Wolfe 
 had scaled the fearful hights that buttressed the Plains of 
 Abraham, and when the sun rose the astonished soldiers of 
 Montcalm saw its rays flashing back from the bayonets of 
 their enemies, whose compact lines were drawn up in battle 
 array. The fierce conflict that ensued is now historical, and 
 its events need not here be recapitulated. The treaty that 
 followed ceded all Canada to the British crown. On the 29th 
 of November, 1760, Detroit was surrendered to an English 
 force. 
 
 The numerous Indian tribes of the northwest were the 
 allies of the French, and their hatred of the English was 
 bloody and unrelenting. Pontiac, the great chief of the 
 fierce Ottawas, of Lake Michigan, was a savage of wonderful 
 endowments. Eloquent and sagacious in council, fearless in 
 battle, and with an energy that never tired or faltered, he 
 wielded an influence over all the other tribes, never equaled 
 by an Indian warror, until his successor, Tecumseh, appeared 
 upon the wild scene of action. 
 
 Pontiac saw at once that the only safety of his people lay 
 in the extermination of the encroaching English. Fired 
 with this conviction, the fierce chief, without companionship 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 70 
 
 of any kind, threaded the dark and pathless forest on a war 
 mission to all the tribes bordering on Lakes Huron, Michi 
 gan, and Superior, and even penetrated the wilderness which 
 held the Iroquois of the Onondaga region. Tireless, sleep 
 less, and inspired by a patriotic hate, that seemed to sustain 
 him beyond natural strength, he finally succeeded in gather 
 ing a force of two thousand painted warriors, arrayed in a 
 final effort to stay the encroachments of the white invaders 
 
 It was in the spring of 1763, that Pontiac and his follow 
 ers, accompanied by their wives and children, took the trail 
 that led from Lake Huron to Detroit. On his arrival he 
 encamped a short distance from the outwork of the fort, pro 
 fessing a peaceful mission while anxiously awaiting the 
 appearance of his allies. As the different chiefs approached 
 with their followers, they were stopped miles from the town 
 by Pontiac, and constructed their villages beyond the reach 
 3t the knowledge of the garrison of Detroit. 
 In the meantime, Pontiac and his warriors, to the number 
 
 , with their women and children, were permitted to 
 the town at intervals to hold conferences with the 
 English officers, and to exchange the skins of animals for 
 trinkets, tobacco, &c. 
 
 The chief had a daughter which the French soldiers had 
 named -Lac la Belle,- or Belle of the Lake, because of her 
 rare Indian grace and beauty. 
 
 The garrison was commanded by Capt. Gladwyn, a young 
 English officer of great gallantry and fine personal appear 
 ance Lac la Belle soon came to love the English com 
 mander with all the wild fervor of her nature. Gladwyn 
 3turn, manifested a strong interest in the dusky maiden 
 ol the woods , and the two were in each other s company as 
 
 brief opportunity would permit. 
 One day the Indian maiden entered the quarters of Glad- 
 
76 A TALE OP THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 wyn with a pair of moccasins, made by her own hands, and 
 beautifully ornamented, which she had wrought at his request, 
 and presented them to him. She was silent, but her face was 
 sad and sorrowful, and her eyes suffused with tears. He 
 questioned her as to the cause of her unwonted manner, to 
 which she only responded with sobs. Gladwyn, supposing it 
 to be but a momentary whim, or a loving, womanly caprice 
 of melancholy that possessed her, tried to enliven her by 
 a few jesting allusions to her unhappy state of feeling, when, 
 some officers entering with reports, he led her to the door, 
 stooped down and kissed her brow affectionately, bid her 
 good bye, with the request that she would call again on the 
 morrow. 
 
 Lac la Belle tottered off a few steps, sat down upon the 
 ground, buried her face in her hands, while her long, black 
 tresses fell forward upon her knees. 
 
 She remained in this position so long that the sentinel at 
 the door began to think that there was something of more 
 than common meaning in her despairing attitude and man 
 ner, and stepping inside informed his commander of the 
 singular circumstance. Gladwyn walked to a loop-hole 
 and observed her attentively for a few moments. He then 
 dismissed the officers, and ordered the sentinel to bring the 
 girl before him. The latter stepped toward her and laid his 
 hand gently on her shoulder. 
 
 " The captain desires to speak to you," said the soldier, in 
 a kind and compassionate tone. 
 
 Without a word, or a look of recognition to the sentinel, 
 the girl arose to her feet and walked into the fort. Gladwyn 
 met her at the entrance, and, taking her hand in his, led her 
 to his private office. 
 
 " There is something unusual the matter with my forest 
 bird to-day," he exclaimed, as he placed his arms endearingly 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 77 
 
 around her neck, and kissed the tears from her eyes. " Do 
 you think that I have ceased to love you, because at times I 
 seem neglectful, under the over-pressing cares and anxieties 
 of my position ? The daughter of Pontiac should not grieve 
 over childish fancies." 
 
 At the mention of her father s name a visible thrill 
 passed through the frame of the maiden. Rising slowly to 
 her feet, like one almost bereft of motion, she turned an 
 agonizing look into the face of her lover, and tremulously 
 wailed out : 
 
 " When the sun sinks down into the great water that lies 
 beyond the mountains of the west, the white chief will take 
 a canoe and go down the river to his brethren at Quebec ? 
 I will send one of our people with him, past the Pottawatto- 
 mie village, on the south of the encampment, and then he 
 will be safe. I can say no more. Will the white chief heed 
 the words of the weak Indian girl who would die for him, 
 but cannot save him if he remains ? " 
 
 The conviction that a treacherous assault upon the place 
 by Pontiac was matured and imminent flashed upon the mind 
 of Gladwyn. He drew himself up to his full attitude, and 
 a soldierly fire gleamed from his eye. 
 
 "And it is the daughter of a great chief who would 
 counsel the one who loves her to cowardly flee from a danger 
 he should be the first to confront? Would Lac la Belle 
 have me to leave my comrades to the slaughter and the tor 
 ture of savage cruelty and seek refuge in flight ? Girl, you 
 are crazed with brooding over a terrible secret, in which my 
 life is involved, and you know not the infamy you advise. I 
 cannot ask you to betray your father. Go back to your 
 people with your secret unbroken, and leave me to whatever 
 fate craft and treachery may have prepared for myself, and 
 the companions whose lives are entrusted to me." 
 
78 A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 Thus speaking, Gladwyn took the girl by the hand to lead 
 her to the door. But the maiden released his clasp, and 
 gazing into his eyes for an instant with an expression of 
 tender and subdued pride, said : 
 
 " The white chief has spoken well, and the poor Indian 
 girl is mad. But the Great Spirit has let a light into her 
 heart, and there she can read what he would have her say. 
 Listen !" 
 
 " When the sun is over the tops of the pines to-morrow, 
 Pontiac will come into the fort with fifty chiefs, each carry 
 ing a gun that has been cut off so as to be easily hidden 
 under their blankets. He will demand a council. At a 
 signal every English officer will be killed, and the sentinels 
 at the gate will be shot down by a number of our people who 
 will be carelessly lying about on the grass at the entrance. 
 Two hundred picked warriors will be crouched under the 
 high banks of the river, who will then rush in, and every 
 living white man, woman and child, is to be killed and 
 scalped/ 7 
 
 She paused a moment, and seemed to be painfully strug 
 gling with some internal conflict for further utterance. At 
 last, she continued in a firmer voice, like one who has mas 
 tered her emotions : 
 
 " And now the Indian girl has told you all, and betrayed 
 her father and her kindred to perhaps certain death. And 
 why has she done this against those who are only trying to 
 reclaim their own from the cruel race which lias so wronged 
 them ? She can only say it is because she loves the white 
 chief, and can wish to die for his safety. She could see all 
 his people perish, and joy in their torture. But she loves 
 the white chief who has been so kind to her, and she cannot 
 keep what she has revealed. The Great Spirit has spoken 
 through the tongue of Lac la Belle." 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 79 
 
 Again she paused. But the tears were dried upon her 
 cheek, and her whole deportment was touchingly calm and 
 womanly. She then took a step forward, clasped the hand of 
 the commander in both her own, laid her head upon his 
 bosom, and said in a soft, sad voice : 
 
 " The white chief is wise, and will be prepared for to 
 morrow, but will shed no blood. This is all the Indian girl 
 asks of him she loves." 
 
 So saying, she gathered her embroidered blanket about her 
 graceful form, left the fort, passed the wondering sentinel at 
 the gate, entered a bark canoe, and soon joined her people on 
 the Canadian side of the river. 
 
 The morning sun rose slowly out of the eastern forest and 
 shot his rays full upon the palisades of Detroit. The giant 
 pines seemed transfixed in the pulseless atmosphere. All 
 around was the sublimity of forest solitude. The garrison 
 had been under arms all night, but as the daylight advanced 
 into the unbroken silence, the soldiers had been dismissed for 
 two hours of sleep. A few drowsy sentinels alone leaned 
 motionless upon their muskets. 
 
 About ten o clock a fleet of canoes were seen to put out 
 from the western shore of the river toward the fort. These 
 were filled with squaws and children, who soon swarmed into 
 the vacant space in the rear of the wooden defenses of De 
 troit. An hour later Pontiac and his confederate chiefs 
 appeared upon the ground, closely wrapped in their blankets, 
 but all seemingly unarmed. But their dark eyes shot forth 
 the baleful fires of anticipated massacre, as they cast furtive 
 glances of hate upon defenses and defenders. 
 
 The chieftains reached the gate of the little town, which 
 was at once thrown open for their admission. As the savages 
 filed up the single street toward the council chamber, a sight 
 met their view that startled even Pontiac from his usual 
 
80 A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 stoicism, and a fierce exclamation, half strangled in its birth r 
 escaped him. On either side of their advance stood an hun 
 dred stalwart soldiers of England, with bayoneted guns in 
 their hands, and pistols in their belts ! 
 
 Pontiac saw at a glance that his plot was either suspected 
 or betrayed. On entering the council chamber with his fol 
 lowers, he sat sullenly down upon the ground, in evident 
 doubt and perplexity. At length he arose, and with a fierce 
 look at Gladwyn, enquired : 
 
 " Did my white brother suspect the truth of Pontiac and 
 his people that he thus receives them as enemies ? When 
 was the wampum of amity broken between us ? When did 
 an Ottawa speak with forked tongue, or draw the tomahawk 
 in a council of peace ?" 
 
 " My young men," responded Gladwyn, with a sarcastic 
 smile, " are only receiving their warrior friends after the 
 custom of the English. Our king would be angry with his 
 servants if they neglected such honors when so great a chief 
 as Pontiac was a guest under his flag." 
 
 The eye of the baffled savage gleamed like that of a rattle 
 snake, as he turned from the face of Gladwyn, slowly around 
 upon the assembled officers of the fort. Once he seemed in 
 the act of giving the signal, but on the instant the rattle of 
 musketry without, and the deep alarm roll of the drum, 
 dispelled what little hope he had of taking his enemy una 
 wares. The council soon broke up without further incident, 
 and the Indians at once departed to their own encampments 
 on the farther side of the river. 
 
 A week had now elapsed since the events we have just 
 narrated, and not a single savage had attempted to enter the 
 fort, or hold parley with its defenders. Their hunting parties 
 could be seen leaving the Ottawa village every morning, 
 returning in the evening with canoes laden with venison, but 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 81 
 
 no demonstration of either friendship or hostility broke in 
 upon the monotony of garrison life. 
 
 But on the morning of the eighth day a canoe, in which 
 was seated a single warrior, was seen by a sentinel to put out 
 from the opposite shore of the river, directly toward the fort. 
 There was a strong, skillful hand at the paddle, and on the 
 the light craft came with a speed that excited the admiration 
 of the half civilized hunters who made a part of the garrison, 
 and who had crowded to the palisades the moment the sen 
 tinel had announced the coming of the canoe. 
 
 " I ll bet my rifle agin an old chaw of tobacker," exclaimed 
 a long, gaunt, frowsy-headed trapper from the head of Lake 
 Michigan, who had come down but the day before with a 
 canoe load of peltries to trade at the fort, " that yonder big 
 red devil is one of them bloody Ojibwas from Huron. There 
 aint a Chippewa, nor a Wyandot, nor a skulking wolf of a 
 Mingo of the Great Lake, who can put a boat through a head 
 wind, on a straight line, like that sarpent is a doing it." 
 
 The savage had now approached near the shore, and the 
 trapper, with hand shading his eyes, was attentively scrutin 
 izing his appearance. Whatever the suspicions of the latter 
 might have been when the Indian was first seen approaching, 
 closer investigation seemed entirely to confirm them. 
 
 " May I be roasted on hemlock logs by Ottawa squaws," 
 he suddenly broke forth, " ef that red nigger haint got a 
 white gal s hair at his belt." 
 
 And without further words he raised his fatal rifle to his 
 shoulder. Another second and the Indian, who. had reached 
 the shore, and was about pulling his boat up on the sandy 
 slope, would have received a leaden passport to the happy 
 hunting ground. But just then a strong arm seized the 
 trapper by his long matted locks, and hurled him backward 
 upon the ground. His rifle was discharged as he was falling, 
 
82 A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 and the contents passed harmlessly into the air. It was 
 Gladwyn who had thus opportunely arrived, and saved the 
 life of the intended victim. 
 
 " Take that chattering idiot to the fort," he exclaimed, 
 " and chain him to a picket until we can deal with him as his 
 offense demands. Such fools are the cause of nearly all the 
 blood that is spilled in these wars, and must be taught the 
 rules of Christian warfare." 
 
 The discomfited trapper was led off by a file of soldiers, 
 but as he went he turned his face to Gladwyn and said : 
 
 " Cap in, mayhap you ll see afore you re much older that 
 Ingins will be Ingins, and your Christian warfare 7 aint 
 zackly the medicine to cure their complaint. When you ve 
 lived in these here woods as long as I have, and larned more 
 of the ways of the red varmints, p raps you ll git your eye 
 teeth cut, and p raps you won t. At any rate, I know I m 
 right, and will try the same thing over agin on the first 
 durn d redskin that comes within reach of my rifle, wearing 
 a white gal s scalp. So, Cap in, ef that aint your style, you 
 mout as well shoot me right here." 
 
 In the meantime the Indian, who was evidently unarmed, 
 had pushed his boat hastily back into the water on the report 
 of the rifle, and then turned to reconnoitre. Apparently 
 satisfied that the demonstration was not intended for him, he 
 again beached his canoe, and wrapping his blanket around 
 him so as to hide the hideous trophy that had so enraged the 
 trapper, strode up to the gate of the fort. 
 
 He was admitted by the commander in person, and at once 
 proceeded to announce his mission. 
 
 "Pontiac wants the Englishman, with as many of his 
 young men as he chooses to bring with him, to come over at 
 once to the Ottawa village to a council." 
 
 "And why," rejoined Gladwyn, " does my brother make 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 83 
 
 such a request now for the first time ? He has always here 
 tofore came with his warriors to the fort, when he wished a 
 talk with his English friends. Has he not been suffered to 
 depart in peace as he came, and with many presents from his 
 white father, the King ?" 
 
 " Pontiac is a mighty chief, and his braves are of many 
 tribes, and as numerous as the pigeons that come from the 
 south when the leaves are reddened by the frost and the beach 
 nuts fall to the ground. The messenger has but to deliver 
 his words, and has no right to know their meaning. When 
 the sun begins to turn the shadows of the hemlocks toward 
 the north, Wawatam will return to him who sent him." 
 
 So saying the huge savage sat down upon the ground, lit 
 his pipe, and refused all further conversation. Nor would he 
 partake of the hospitality freely tendered him by officers and 
 soldiers. He continued to smoke in calm indifference to his 
 surroundings, and never once returned the look of the curious 
 idlers who had gathered around him. He wore the elk skin 
 moccasin of the Ojibwas, the fiercest and bloodiest of all the 
 savages of the Great Lakes. 
 
 The trapper before mentioned was fastened with a dog 
 chain to a post within the fort, but the door was open so that 
 he could look out upon the scene in front. The bearer of 
 Pontiac s message sat about fifty yards distant, and upon him 
 the prisoner stared with a look of perplexed uncertainty. At 
 last he said to the sentinel : 
 
 "See here, red coat, just send one of your fellers over to 
 that Ingin, and see if the little finger of his left hand aint 
 
 The soldier was a kindly, good-natured man, and at once 
 requested a comrade to stroll over and carelessly make the 
 desired investigation. The result confirmed what the trapper 
 had suggested. With a stifled burst of rage he muttered : 
 
84 A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 " The Ojibwa thief and murderer ! He has the hair of my 
 brother and his little boy, in his wigwam by the outlet of the 
 Upper Huron ! And here am I, chained like a dog to his 
 kennel ! Damn that l Christian warfare 7 of an English Cap 
 tain ! A smooth-faced boy to teach old Joe Lukens what s 
 manners among redskins !" 
 
 He shook his head a few moments in silence, and then 
 resumed in a low voice, as if arguing against a resolve that 
 he could hardly reconcile to his conscience. 
 
 " Xo, no ; the meddling youngster only did his duty, I 
 suppose, accordin to his light. He came from a country over 
 the seas, where the Quebec traders say there is nothin but 
 cities, and ignorant people who live in houses, and where hair 
 the men, women and children starve, that a few of their 
 breatheren may, accordin to missionary talk up to Michilli- 
 mackinac, dress in purple and fine linen, and fare sumtooisly 
 every day." 
 
 Again he paused. Again shook his head deprecatingly. 
 Again continued : 
 
 " I can t bring myself to hate that boy of an English cap 
 tain, and to act accordingly when I git clear of this infarnal 
 hole, where a woodman can scace git his breath. There was 
 a day, when I first went out with the French of Montreal 
 agin the cussed Iroquois of the Six Nations, when I would a 
 twisted his neck off for sich as this, with as little compunc 
 tion as I would that of a wounded patridge. But I was 
 young then, and I fear, as bloody minded as a wild Mingo, 
 when the war-whoop sounded in the woods by Lake Ontary. 
 But I spose the English lad only did his duty acordin ta 
 his light, and that is the most the best of us kin do, acordin 
 to the missionary doctern." 
 
 " But," he shouted, after a short pause, and springing to 
 the length of his iron tether, " does the brat, in his braided 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 85 
 
 soldier fixins, think this chain can hold me longer than I 
 choose to be dog-tied to his pine stick ? " 
 
 The sentinel here lowered his bayonet to the breast of the 
 prisoner, and commanded silence. The trapper smiled, and 
 sat down upon a low bench. 
 
 " Fergive me, comrade/ 7 he exclaimed, " I aint got nothin 
 agin you, you are only doin acordin to your bringin up, and 
 you would be shot acordin to ( Christian warfare/ as the boy 
 has it, if you showed you was a white man of the woods, and 
 let me out of this badger s den. Your ways aint as my 
 ways, and I aint got anything agin you. But before the 
 moon lights up the eastern forest, Joe Lukens will be either 
 & dead lump of earth, or a free man of the wilderness. He 
 would rather take his chances with the Ingins, than be 
 chained with the white men of Christian warfare ! 
 
 As we have said before, Gladwyn was a brave and fearless 
 soldier. He had his doubts about the intentions of the 
 savages in thus demanding his presence in their midst, but 
 rather than show doubt and timidity, he resolved to brave 
 the consequences. As the hour indicated by the Ojibwa 
 messenger approached, he selected three of his trustiest subor 
 dinates, and informed the savage that he was ready to go 
 with him. 
 
 The Indian arose without a word, led the way out of the 
 gate, down to the river, and the party entered the boat. A 
 few minutes brought them to the other side, where Pontiac, 
 and fully a hundred painted chiefs and warriors stood ready 
 to receive them. 
 
 No greetings passed between the parties as they met, and 
 a sullen hostility marked the expression in the face of each 
 warrior. Even the squaws and children, who usually mani 
 fest delight at the gathering of a peaceful council between 
 
86 A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 their people and the whites, now wore a look hungry for 
 blood. 
 
 Pontiac pointed to a log enclosure, covered with hemlock 
 branches, and led the way. The line filed in and formed a 
 circle, placing the Englishmen in the centre. Every action 
 thus far had a look ominous of danger. A hundred, deep 
 set, black, snaky eyes, shed a lurid light of hate upon the 
 four unarmed men, but not a sound had yet been uttered. 
 
 Pontiac raised his right hand, and his warriors at once 
 squatted upon the ground. He then took one step forward 
 from the circle, and looking for a moment steadily into the 
 eyes of Gladwyn, whose face was paler than usual, but firm 
 of expression, spoke as follows : 
 
 " The Chief of the Ottawas has but few words for the ear 
 of the servant of the English King. But these shall be the 
 words of truth. The tongue that, says one thing while the 
 heart means another has been heard between us until we are 
 ashamed of ourselves, and our eyes wander from the faces we 
 are trying to deceive. Two thousand warriors are in the 
 woods within sight of the smoke of Detroit. They have 
 come to push the English from the place they have stolen. 
 Deliver up the fort, go back to your own people, and the 
 word of Pontiac will keep you and your young men from 
 harm on the way. AVhat has my brother to say ? " 
 
 Gladwyn stood silent a few moments, as one who is trying 
 to reflect upon the bearing of an unexpected proposition. 
 Then, in a low and distinct voice, and a calm and determined 
 manner, he said : 
 
 " The great chief of the Ottawas is angry, and knows not 
 what he asks. A bad spirit has got between my brother and 
 the light, and would lead his people to destruction. They 
 sold this land to the French, and received the price. The 
 French King went to Avar with the English and was con. 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 87 
 
 quered. A great council was held, and a treaty of peace 
 made, in which all this country claimed by the French, and 
 held by them, was yielded up to my people, and " 
 
 Here Pontiac, whose impatient rage at the claims of Glad- 
 wyn had given him the look of a demon during these 
 brief words, threw his blanket from his shoulders, and with 
 a majesty of mien that seemed of inspiration, strode close in 
 front of his adversary, and with arm outstretched toward 
 heaven, and eye turned upon his followers, exclaimed : 
 
 " The tongue of the Englishman is the tongue of a liar, 
 and should be torn out by the roots. There never was a 
 time, since the Great Spirit made the world, and gave this 
 heritage to his red children, in which our fathers have not 
 been in the possession of the country, its woods, its lakes, 
 and the great plains on which no trees grow. The French 
 man came, not many moons since, and the red man gave him 
 lands on which to hunt, and waters in which to fish. They 
 were his only at the will of our people. We had more than 
 we needed, and the Great Manito of the red man told us to 
 receive the white strangers as our brothers. The French 
 King came, not with guns to command, but with tongue to 
 request. The chain of friendship was held by a red hand at 
 the north, and a white hand at the south. There was blood 
 upon neither, and all the links were brightened in the rays 
 of peace. The Englishman came, like a wolf among deer, 
 and stirred up strife between us. He lied to our young men, 
 and they went on the war path against their friends at 
 Quebec. Then at last, the cunning Englishman came in 
 and laid claim upon all the country, while its true owners 
 were weakened like children, with the loss of blood." 
 
 Then turning full upon Gladwyn, the aroused savage 
 rather yelled than spoke : 
 
 "Yes, liar, with the double tongue, you came here as 
 
88 A TALE OF THE WARS OF POXTIAC. 
 
 wanderers and beggars, and now you would remain as con 
 querors and owners ! " 
 
 Then wheeling slowly around upon the circle of his war 
 riors, he continued : 
 
 " And now what is to be done with these prisoners f " 
 
 In an instant each warrior leaped to his feet, a glittering 
 knife gleamed in each hand, held far above the head, while 
 the startled echoes of the forest responded from its depths to 
 yells, such as no human ear ever heard from human throats, 
 other than those of North American savages when aroused to 
 a carnival of blood. 
 
 The treacherous chief gazed a few moments proudly upon 
 his ferocious followers, who intently watched his every mo 
 tion, expectant of the signal that was to let loose their fury 
 upon the pale but unflinching prisoners. He raised his 
 hand, and every Indian replaced his scalping-knife, and sank 
 slowly down upon the ground. 
 
 " An Ottawa never sheds blood in his council lodge, unless 
 his enemies are equal in numbers. The English captain 
 will remain. His young men can go." 
 
 In an instant the savages gathered around the three officers 
 who had accompanied their commander, and hurried them 
 out of the lodge. They had scarcely disappeared, leaving 
 Pontiac and Gladwyn alone, when 
 
 " At once there rose so wild a yell, 
 As if all the fiends from Heaven that fell, 
 Had pealed the battle cry of hell ! " 
 
 The shrill screams of the squaws and children, mingled with 
 the hoarse howls of the warriors, and the low groans of 
 mortal agony that filled the lull in the yells of the demons, 
 told but too plainly, to the wretched English captain, the 
 fate of his companions. 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 89 
 
 In a few moments a gigantic savage, with face smeared with 
 blood and brains, entered the lodge. It was Wawatam, the 
 Ojibwa envoy of the morning. Without a word, he ap 
 proached Pontiac, and throwing down a matted and bloody 
 mass at the feet of the chief, departed as silently as he had ap 
 proached. 
 
 Maddened beyond all bounds of moral restraint at the sight 
 of the bleeding scalps of his faithful comrades of fort and 
 field, Gladwyn turned to the Ottawa chief, with dauntless and 
 defiant mien, and in measured and unfaltering tones, said : 
 
 " The blood of the slain murdered treacherously in a 
 council of peace be upon the head of Pontiac and his people. 
 Henceforth I will hunt his warriors, his squaws, and his chil 
 dren, as wolves and their cubs are hunted, without mercy. 
 On the waters, in the wilderness, w r herever an Ottawa or his 
 allies paddles a canoe or erects a lodge, will the bullets of the 
 English seek victims, until none are left for the chase or the 
 war path. I swear this before the murderer of my comrades !" 
 
 Ere these words had hardly left the tongue that uttered 
 them, Pontiac sprang with a bound in front of the English 
 man, with tomahawk uplifted above his head. The face of 
 the savage was distorted with a hellish rage, such as no painter 
 ever drew, or no sculptor ever wrought ! The captive quailed 
 not for an instant, but met the demoniac gaze of the warrior, 
 with an eye as fearless, if not as baleful, as his own. 
 
 The tw r o thus confronted each other for the space of a min 
 ute, and the Indian slowly lowered his weapon, and returned 
 it to his girdle. The intensity of his ferocious look was re 
 laxed, but its unrelenting determination was still there, as he 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " The white warrior is brave, but he has no strength, and 
 his words are the words of a woman. There are many trees 
 between Detroit and the great lakes, with a warrior of my peo- 
 
 F 
 
90 A TALE OF THE WARS OF POXTIAC. 
 
 pie behind each. The English captain forgets himself. He- 
 will go no more upon the war path. When the sun lifts the 
 darkness from the river in the morning, so that the eyes of 
 my people can know what their hands do, the white chief 
 dies. The squaws and children of Pontiac are now gathering 1 
 the wood that will consume him in its fires. My people will 
 see if a warrior of the English King can boast so bravely in 
 the flames as in the council chamber." 
 
 The chief paused, and uttered a low gutteral sound. In 
 stantly two savages entered and approached Gladwyn, and led 
 him to a stake firmly driven in the ground, by one corner ot 
 the lodge. They then proceeded to tie his hands and feef 
 securely to the post, with thongs of deer skin, in such a 
 manner that he was forced to stand upright, without the 
 power to change, in the least, his position. This accom 
 plished, Pontiac and the two Indians departed, leaving the 
 victim alone. 
 
 Slowly the sun sank down behind the deep, dark forests of 
 the western horizon, and the twilight came on, and thickened 
 into night. The silent stars came forth one by one, and took 
 up their appointed places in the vault of eternity. The giant 
 trees bent their tops toward each other, as the wind wrestled 
 with their foliage, and whispered of the centuries that had 
 fled since they were saplings in the soil. 
 
 The young English soldier was still alone, in the painful 
 bonds of his captors. But the agony of thought deadened 
 his physical sufferings. He knew that Pontiac was the blood 
 iest and most unrelenting of his fierce race, and that his many 
 great wrongs had driven him into a mood of ferocious in 
 sanity. He had never yet betrayed the confidence reposed in 
 him by the French, but from the English his people had only 
 received outrage and injustice. He revenged himself accor- 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 91 
 
 ding to his Indian nature, which was tireless in pursuit, and 
 merciless in execution. 
 
 The young soldier was a bound captive in the wilderness of 
 the New World, and the silent shadow of Death was creeping 
 in upon him. But his thoughts were not of himself. They 
 were wandering over the broad expanse of forest and river, of 
 mountain and prairie, over across three thousand miles of 
 watery waste to the little cot on the banks of the Severn, that 
 held all most dear to him of earth his widowed mother, his 
 only sister. It was hard to die thus, so young, so strong, so 
 wedded to life by all the ties that make the most courageous 
 natures shrink from the dread silence of the grave. Anon 
 the current of his thoughts returned to his present surround 
 ings, and the sad face of the daughter of Pontiac looked up 
 out of his vision. Was she safe ? Had she escaped the de 
 tection and the vengeance of her father ? 
 
 The big tears welled up into the eyes of the young soldier, 
 and dropped, " pat," " pat," " pat," upon the dry leaves amid 
 which he stood. When hope has deserted one in the hour of 
 dire extremity, memory softens the hardest heart into the 
 weakness of a child. 
 
 A slight noise outside now came to the acute ear of the 
 captive, and on the instant two stalwart Indians entered. 
 One was Wawatam, the Ojibwa, and the other a favorite 
 young chief of Pontiac. Each was armed with gun, pistols, 
 and scalping knife. They advanced toward Gladwyn and 
 closely examined his bonds. Satisfied with the scrutiny, the 
 young savage sat down upon the ground within a few feet of 
 the prisoner, while the Ojibwa went outside and took up a 
 position at the door. Not a word had been spoken. 
 
 Slowly the hours waned on. Midnight had approached., 
 and all sounds had ceased in the Indian encampment. 
 
 In an hour thereafter, a form dimly seen in the darkness,. 
 
92 A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 slowly, and without the least sound from the yielding sand, 
 snaking its way along toward a clump of bushes that stood at 
 one corner of the chamber, and between the sentinel and the 
 approaching object. Whatever the mysterious creature was, 
 man or animal, it evidently meant mischief. When the back 
 of the Indian was turned, the stealthy object would make a 
 rapid advance, and when the former again faced the river, the 
 latter would lay prone among the surrounding logs, from 
 which it could not be distinguished. At last the clump of 
 bushes was reached, and the creature lay still within the cover. 
 
 In about fifteen minutes more, a light form, closely wrapped 
 in a blanket, advanced out of the darkness into the dim light 
 of the fire that smouldered near the spot where the sentinel 
 now squatted upon the sand. The savage started to his feet, 
 leveled his gun, and uttered a low sound. A whispered re 
 sponse, and the chief lowered his weapon, resumed his seat, 
 and the form passed into the council chamber. The young 
 warrior within uttered an ejaculation of surprise. 
 
 Gladwyn looked up. Lac la Belle stood before him ! 
 
 An expression of joy lit up the pale features of the En 
 glishman, as he recognized the maiden, which was about to 
 express itself in words, when with a quick and intelligent 
 gesture, she imposed silence. Then she approached the senti 
 nel, took his hand, looked up in his face with a beseeching 
 smile, and said : 
 
 " Miantanoba, listen. You have told me that you loved 
 the daughter of Pontiac. Release the English captain, and 
 she promises to fly with you wherever you may direct, and be 
 the wife of your wigwam. Lac la Belle swears this, and the 
 Great Spirit hears her." 
 
 Wawatam, without, had his ear to a crevice between the 
 logs, and was listening intently. 
 
 The young chief within replied to the Indian maiden : 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF POXTIAC. 93 
 
 " Lac la Belle loves the Englishman, and it is for his sake 
 that she will become the wife of Miantanoba. The dog shall 
 die." 
 
 " The white chief has been kind to the Indian girl," replied 
 the maiden, "and she would save him. This is all she can 
 say. The time is short. Will Miantanoba listen to my 
 words?" 
 
 Wawatam pressed his ear closer to the aperture, and his 
 face was distorted with a horrible ferocity. 
 
 " The dog shall die," repeated the young Indian, " and Lac 
 la Belle will be the wife of Miantanoba, or Pontiac shall 
 know that she loves the Englishman, and betrayed her 
 people." 
 
 The Indian turned away from the suppliant. Quick as 
 lightning she drew a long knife from the folds of her blanket, 
 and struck its glittering blade deep into the heart of the sav 
 age. He reeled a moment, clutched at his tomahawk, and 
 fell dead. 
 
 A loud yell from the Ojibwa startled the sleeping echoes of 
 the surrounding forests to their depths for miles. But ere 
 that wild cry could be repeated, a dark object leaped up from 
 the ground, seized the gigantic warrior by his long scalp lock, 
 bent his head back, and drew a sharp knife across his throat, 
 nearly severing the head from the body. 
 
 " Blast yer durned red hide, stop that hollerin !" exclaimed 
 the trapper, as the huge savage lay squirming and gasping at 
 his feet. 
 
 With a single bound the trapper cleared the dying form of 
 his enemy and stood within the enclosure. Lac la Belle had 
 already cut the thongs that had [bound her lover, but his be 
 numbed limbs refused the efforts of his will, and the captive 
 had sank to the ground. In an instant the trapper seized the 
 
94 A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 prostrate form and swung it to his shoulder, as though it had 
 but the weight of an infant. 
 
 " Gal, quick, lead the way to the river," he whispered, and 
 the two were soon in rapid flight in that direction. 
 
 Scarce a minute had elapsed from the war whoop of the 
 Ojibwa, to the release of the Englishman, and yet th ewhole 
 encampment was alarmed, and wild yells and hurrying feet 
 oould be heard through the darkness. Pontiac was the first 
 to hear the death cry of the sentinel, and leaping from 
 his couch, sought to grasp his gun. But it was gone ! He 
 shouted for his daughter. She was not there ! The chief 
 gave a prolonged yell of rage, grasped his bow and a 
 sheaf of arrows that lay in a corner of the lodge, and rushed 
 out toward the council chamber. 
 
 The Indians had evidently mistaken the cause of this night 
 alarm. They naturally supposed that a rescuing party from 
 the fort had been discovered by the sentinels, and were run 
 ning in every direction, the darkness adding to their confusion. 
 
 Pontiac, followed by a few chiefs, entered the council cham 
 ber. The dead body of the sentinel, and the blanket of Lac 
 la Belle close by the stake to which the Englishman had been 
 bound, told the story. 
 
 As the truth flooded fully upon the understanding of the 
 fierce savage, the agony depicted upon his distorted features 
 was fearful to look upon. He seemed like a demon paralyzed 
 with rage. His breast heaved, and sobs and groanings issued 
 therefrom. He clutched his throat, like one strangling with 
 his emotions. The hated enemy of his race escaped, and his 
 daughter the betrayer of her people ! All his plans, all his 
 hopes thwarted in a moment. 
 
 This scene lasted but a few seconds. A succession of loud 
 yells, followed by the discharge of several guns in the direc 
 tion of the canoes, awakened the chief from his delirium of 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OP PONTIAC. 95 
 
 rage and despair. With the leap of a deer he cleared the 
 threshold of the cabin, and sped away toward the river. 
 Hundreds of his warriors had here gathered, and were run 
 ning up and down like infuriated madmen. Dimly seen in 
 the far darkness of the river were the outlines of a single canoe, 
 from which came the occasional splash of a paddle. All the 
 rest of the fleet had been cut adrift long before the alarm, for 
 none but the one that was propelled toward the opposite shore 
 was in sight ! 
 
 But the quick eye of Pontiac soon discovered a boat about 
 fifty yards distant, which had been caught in the eddy of a 
 rock. Without a word he plunged into the water, his weapon 
 at his back. A few moments sufficed to place the desperate 
 chief in possession of the canoe, and the chase began. 
 
 The foremost boat had now got beyond the dark shadows 
 which the tall forest had thrown upon the waters. In its 
 prow could be seen the daughter of Pontiac, with the head of 
 Gladwyn resting upon her knees. In the stern sat the trap 
 per, with skilled hand at the paddle. 
 
 The old man was chuckling all over with suppressed glee, 
 at an adventure he had evidently commenced relating to ears 
 that heard not, for he continued : 
 
 " Yes, cap in, its a mighty handy thing to have a file some 
 where about your clothes, when you happen to drift among 
 people who keep dog chains for white men, and then go oif 
 alone to palaver with red Injins. Not that I blame you for 
 goin acordin to your bringin up. Some folks never larn 
 anything, ony what they got to home. Sich hev no bisness 
 in the woods, specially when Injins are about. Cap in, what s 
 your pinion of < Christian warfare/ jist about this time? 
 Thet skelp of yourn aint jist safe yet, but you will hev time 
 to give your pinion upon ( Christian warfare before that red 
 -devil oif yonder ketches up with us." 
 
96 A TALE OF THE WARS OF POXTIAC. 
 
 The trapper here paused again to indulge in another 
 chuckle, which he seemed to enjoy amazingly. 
 
 " Well, Cap in," he resumed, "that sentinel of yourn went 
 off into a doze like, and then I begun to snore like a drunken 
 Frenchman. Bimeby he snored too, natural like. I had 
 spjjed your dog chain afore dark, while that chap had gone to 
 git his rashuns. And so, when I knowed there warn t no 
 make Vlieve about that snore of his n, I jist snapped the 
 durn d link close to my ankle, jumped squar over his head, 
 knocked down the feller outside the door, and went over the 
 stockade like an Injin thief in the night, swum the river, 
 and you and your gal knows the rest. Cap in, you won t be 
 mean enough to chain a feller up agin for this, on Christian 
 warfare rules, if I git you and the gal back agin, safe to the 
 fort, will you?" 
 
 The trapper fairly laughed outright at the conclusion of 
 his remarks, for the humor of the thing seemed so irresistible. 
 So absorbed had he become in the recital of his escape from 
 the fort, and in avenging his wrongs in quiet sarcasm at the 
 author of them, that he had began to relax his efforts at the 
 paddle, and had, in a manner, withdrawn his attention from 
 the pursuit. All of a sudden the deep clouds over head 
 parted, and the full moon came forth and illumined the entire 
 bed of the river. The trapper looked hurriedly around. 
 The canoe of Pontiac was less than thirty yards in the rear. 
 The trapper now made a desperate effort to increase the dis 
 tance, when the paddle snapped short off in his hands ! 
 
 " Curse my babbling tongue," he exclaimed, and his whole 
 nature seemed to change at once. He answered the triumph 
 ant yell which Pontiac had uttered on being discovered, by a 
 shout of defiance which echoed over the waters, and was even 
 sent back from the defences of the fort, now plainly visible in 
 the moonlight. 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 97 
 
 " Am I a fool from the great cities, that I prattle like a 
 boy, when I should be silent and watchful over the lives that 
 are in my keeping/ he yelled, starting to his feet, and look 
 ing around vainly for a weapon. 
 
 " Not even a knife, 77 he bitterly muttered, " and a helpless 
 man, and a feeble girl to be murdered before my eyes, unless 
 I am killed first, which I pray God may happen. 77 
 
 lie was interrupted by a scream from the Indian girl, as 
 she sprang up, and threw herself in front of the young Eng 
 lishman. At the same instant an arrow whizzed past the 
 trapper, and found lodgment in the breast ot Lac la Belle. 
 
 Pontiac stood in the prow of his canoe, his splendid form 
 clearly revealed in the moonlight, gazing intently ahead in an 
 effort to ascertain the effect of his shot. 
 
 " It is well, 77 he murmured, in a sad tone. " The arrow 
 was aimed at another, but the Great Spirit directed its flight 
 to the heart of her who would die for one of the accursed 
 race. The daughter of Pontiac will soon be no more, but the 
 Englishman, for whom she betrayed her people, shall go with 
 her. 77 
 
 The savage deliberately placed another arrow to his bow, 
 but ere he could draw the string, the sound of cannon rang 
 from the fort, a number of balls splashed the water close to 
 the boats, the canoe of Pontiac was knocked to pieces, and 
 left the chief struggling in the water. At the same instant 
 a boat filled with soldiers came in full view, and with a few 
 more strokes of the oar was along side of the one that con 
 tained the fugitives. 
 
 A few seconds sufficed for a hurried explanation, the canoe 
 was fastened to the boat of the rescuing party, which had, by 
 this time, turned its prow toward the fort. Neither Gladwyn 
 nor the trapper was aware that the fatal arrow of Pontiac 
 had found lodgment in the bosom of his daughter. She sat 
 
98 A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 with her face bent downward upon her knees, and paid no 
 attention to what was going on around her. 
 
 As the boat rounded for the shore, the trapper leaned over 
 to one of the soldiers and whispered : 
 
 " Red coat, jist, accidentally like, hand me that smooth 
 bore of yourn. There is a murderin redskin a paddlin 
 around out yonder, that wants a leetle help in his diffikilty. 
 It is a shame to see a feller creter drown, when an ounce of 
 lead could save him." 
 
 The Indian maiden raised her head quickly, and said : 
 
 " The white hunter may have a daughter among his own 
 people. He will spare the life of the father of Lac la Belle ?" 
 
 At the sound of her voice, Gladwyn aroused himself from 
 his stupor and putting his hand upon the arm of the trapper, 
 said, in his old tone of command : 
 
 " Man, you have saved my life, and what there is in my 
 power to bestow upon you is for you to ask, or accept. But 
 if you take the life of the chief, you shall die on the instant." 
 
 " "Well !" said the trapper, with a look of indignant amaze 
 ment, "what next? This gosl in-hearted boy would hvae 
 been roasted alive before noon to day, and the red devil who 
 would hev lit the fire, is still within reach of a good aim, and 
 not one of these fellers dare hand me a gun ! A little more 
 of this Christian warfare/ and there won t be a white scalp 
 left on its owner s head, between Detroit and Huron. It s 
 about time that Joe Lukens went back to the settlements, and 
 joined the Methodists, or put on a petticoat and hired hisself 
 out to nuss young niggers on the Virginia plantations !" 
 
 Thus muttering, the trapper seated himself, with a look of 
 inexpressible disgust, but his feelings were too powerful for 
 continued silence. 
 
 " I can t say I blame the gal. The bloody heathen was 
 her father, and wimming miter is the same, in the woods, or 
 
A TALE OF THE WAES OP PONTIAC. 99 
 
 In the cities. I couldn t hev killed the cuss, arter she spoke 
 so pleading like, onless he d a hed his infernal knife at my 
 own throat. But as for that brat of an English cap in," 
 
 The grating of the boat upon the gravelly shore, and the 
 immediate preparations for landing, cut short the unfinished 
 giowlings of the angry trapper. A dozen soldiers, with pine 
 torches in their hands, and anxious inquiry in their faces, stood 
 ready to receive their comrades. At the sight of their com 
 mander and his two companions, the main facts of the case 
 were at once comprehended, and cheer after cheer rent the 
 general silence. These were taken up by a hundred throats 
 within the fort, and in defiance of all discipline and danger, 
 the whole garrison men, women, and children, rushed fran 
 tically down to the landing. 
 
 By this time Gladwyn had nearly recovered from his dazed 
 bewilderment, and began to issue his orders with something 
 of his old soldierly spirit. He released the hand of the In 
 dian maiden, which up to this time he had held closely in his 
 own, though neither had spoken to the other from the com 
 mencement of the fearful adventure to its close, and with the 
 assistance of a soldier, stepped upon the shore. He turned 
 and addressed Lac la Belle in a soft and tender voice : 
 
 " The preserver of my life will arise and come into the fort, 
 where I can thank her devoted heroism and loving regard, as 
 I cannot do here." 
 
 The girl stirred not, and made no sign. But in the 
 now hushed silence, her stifled breathing, and low choking 
 sobs, could be distinctly heard. The soldiers, who had 
 crowded round, looked wonderingly into each other s faces for 
 explanation of the sad and touching behavior of the maiden. 
 
 A loud exclamation almost a shriek fell from the lips of 
 the trapper, who, since the boat touched, had sat in sullen 
 silence upon the bottom of the canoe. 
 
100 A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 
 
 " The arrow the gal is dying !" he gasped out, and, spring 
 ing to his feet, he lifted her up gently in his arms, stepped 
 ashore, and strode rapidly through the parted crowd toward 
 the fort. 
 
 Gladwyn caught the exclamation, and knew at once its 
 dread import. He stood a moment like one from whom life 
 had suddenly departed, uttered a suppressed moan, and then,, 
 assisted by a soldier on either side, tottered on in the direction 
 of the others. 
 
 Lac la Belle lay upon a bed, the rude trapper kneeling 
 beside her, sobbing like an infant. The surgeon was in at 
 tendance, and had extracted the arrow, just as Gladwyn stag 
 gered into the room. He motioned for the soldiers who had 
 crowded around, to leave. Then there were none by the bed 
 side of the dying girl, save the commander, the surgeon, and 
 the trapper. 
 
 " There is no hope," whispered the surgeon, in answer to 
 an imploring look from the young officer. 
 
 Gladwyn approached the bed, bent over the silent sufferer,, 
 and pressed his lips fondly to hers. The maiden slowly 
 opened her eyes, a tender, loving smile illuminated her face- 
 She feebly raised her arms, entwined them about the neck of 
 her lover, and drew his face down upon her bosom. A few 
 moments thus passed in silence, when the surgeon stepped 
 forward, and softly released the clasp of the girl. 
 
 " This will not do," he whispered into the ear of Gladwyn. 
 " Her time is but brief, and she may have something impor 
 tant to say before she departs." 
 
 Gladwyn raised himself to his feet. His vest was clotted 
 with blood the blood of the dying. 
 
 At this moment a Jesuit missionary, who had just arrived 
 at the fort, glided into the room. 
 
A TALE OF THE WARS OF PONTIAC. 101 
 
 The trapper still knelt as at first, but gave no sign. Not a 
 sound escaped him. 
 
 Gladwyn again bent over the maiden, and in a whisper 
 choked by emotion, asked her if she had any request to make. 
 
 The question seemed instantly to revive her. In a low 
 voice she said : 
 
 " It may be a wild and foolish wish. I know that my 
 spirit is passing away, or I would not say the words. Will 
 the white chief- make the daughter of Pontiac his wife, after 
 the custom of his own people ?" 
 
 Instantly Gladwyn knelt down, took the girl s hand in his 
 own, and motioned to the priest. 
 
 And there in the hour and article of death, these two 
 beings were pledged to each other in marriage, and the mis 
 sionary pronounced a benediction upon their union. 
 
 Then the soldier arose to his feet, softly lifted the head of 
 his wife from the pillow, and laid his cheek against hers. 
 She threw her arms about his neck, and with a look of in 
 effable happiness whispered : 
 
 "Husband!" 
 
 Her head fell back. Gladwyn looked into her face and 
 littered a low cry. 
 
 Lac la Belle had died in his arms. 
 
MY FIRST HUNT IN MY NEW HOME. 
 
 I HAD congratulated myself that the " Old Settler " did not 
 deceive a credulous emigrant when he assured me that 
 the weather here in Northern Michigan, owing to the mild 
 influence of the lake, was of about the same temperature in 
 winter as in New Jersey. In great peace of mind I rested 
 in this delusion until that great day of the heart, Christmas, 
 came, with its simple blessings and enjoyments to the lonely 
 and neglected children of our wilderness world. But on the 
 evening of that day the scales fell from my eyes, and icicles 
 took their places. An unusual roaring of the great lake, and 
 a prolonged irregular moaning of the winds, heralded the 
 gathering elemental agitation. The North Pole was evidently 
 stirring up the animals. And now a continuous roar in the 
 forest told me that Boreas had stripped himself to an extra 
 effort. His icy breath gathered fresh volume with each in 
 halation. The snow came down in blinding sheets of drift, 
 which were caught up by the angry gale, and hurled back 
 to the clouds from whence they had been cast forth. Fantas 
 tic shapes and wierd devices were in the instant designed and 
 sculptured upon my cabin window 
 
 "By the elfin fingers of the Frost." 
 
 Iii brief, it came on the coldest night I ever experienced, and 
 how I survived to give it this historic record puzzles my yet 
 imthawed understanding. 
 
MY FIEST HUNT IN MY NEW HOME. 103 
 
 But the " Old Settler," with the proverbial honesty of his 
 race, assures me that in the fifteen years he has lived on the 
 Lake Shore, he never knew as cold a winter as the present. 
 Doubtless he asseverated the same thing to my predecessor 
 last year this time, and will continue to unwind the same yarn 
 to the next newcomer, unless, as I fervently hope, he may 
 be suddenly cut off and that without remedy. 
 
 " But what has all this wordy, windy, inappropo introduc 
 tory to do with the subject matter suggested by your heading? 7 
 
 It is a provoked inquiry, O justifiable interrupter, and 
 shall be truly and unreservedly answered : 
 
 Nothing ! only nothing, and nothing more. But it was 
 packed atop my mental hamper, and had to be unloaded ere 
 the true matter could be reached. 
 
 And thus, like a camel re-assured by the removal of a har- 
 rassing burden, I proceed with renewed pace through the 
 desert of my destination. I will now give you a faithful 
 compilation of my first hunting expedition in these gorgeous 
 wilds. 
 
 From childhood I was a mighty hunter in imagination. 
 Western border adventure constituted my chief reading, and 
 Leather Stocking was my ideal of a hero and a man. But 
 in New Jersey, the land of my birth and boyhood, there was 
 no game in the animal line of greater calibre than the fero 
 cious rabbit, and in the feathered way the robin stood, or 
 rather flew, pre-eminent. Living all my life in cities, I sel 
 dom had opportunity to practice my cruel designs even upon 
 these. 
 
 But when in an evil hour Satan, through his innocent 
 agent, Horace Greeley, called upon me to " go west/ 7 visions 
 of bear, deer, wild turkeys, and other beasts and birds, each 
 after his kind, danced through my enkindled imagination, 
 and I started forth with a whole arsenal of destructive arms 
 
104 MY FIKST HUNT IX MY NEW HOME. 
 
 First was a new English double barrel breech loader, of lam 
 inated steel, for which I paid $100, (per ninety days note of 
 hand, which the fortunate seller still holds among his assets as 
 a panic bankrupt, good of itself, as Jay Gould s Northern 
 Pacifies, but difficult of realization until congress inflates the 
 currency sufficiently to tide over many things now apparently 
 grounded beyond hope, or the reach of resurrection. This is 
 a rather long parenthesis, but truth is mighty and will pre 
 vail.) This was supplemented (not the parenthesis, but the 
 gun mentioned above,) by a single barrel of assured excellence. 
 Then came a Springfield musket, which I had patriotically car 
 ried (by a 600 substitute,) all through the war of the rebellion. 
 A short and beautiful Wesson rifle, and a Spencer seven 
 shooter army carbine, completed the armament with which I 
 started for my new home in the Northwest. Of course I 
 expected to find deer innumerable, in the woods immediately 
 surrounding my little " clearing," and to be chased by a bear 
 every time I went down to the log barn to feed " Fritz," my 
 diminutive but vicious scrub of a Canadian pony. 
 
 Filled with content and happiness at the novelty of my 
 new life, I shouldered my Wesson, a few days after my arri 
 val, and struck out into the solemn primeval forest. My 
 destination was Au Sable Lake, three miles distant, and the 
 way was pointed out to me by a Norwegian neighbor, he be 
 ing one of the three only settlers of our locality. 
 
 The scene as I entered the dark wilderness, was so differ 
 ent from all my past associations, that I soon became absorbed 
 in reflections, solemn and suggestive. The dense and silent 
 solitude was filled with huge trees, whose first roots had 
 struck into the soil centuries before Columbus bored the 
 slothful rulers of Genoa and Spain, with his vagaries of a 
 New World. Mighty hemlocks were here, whose trunks, 
 near the ground, measured five feet in diameter, and whose 
 
MY FIRST HUNT IK MY NEW HOME. 105 
 
 individual years numbered five centuries. Hundreds of such 
 lay prone amid these solitudes, the victims of fire, of age, 
 and of decay, and it requires a strong and active hunter to 
 thread his way amid these barriers to progress. The scene to 
 me presented the fanciful idea, that in some age long past, 
 there had been a battle of the forests, and the slain had been 
 left to blanch and moulder where they had fallen ! 
 
 In about an hour I reached Au Sable, and found it a lovely 
 sheet of water, about three miles in circumference, of crystal 
 clearness, and belted with pine trees, whose green tops were 
 proof against the season s changes, and which suggest thoughts 
 of the glorious summer time, even when the winter rages in 
 unrestrained fury. 
 
 But what sent the blood tingling from citadel to extremities, 
 and gave uncontrollable nervousness to body and limbs, 
 was the long lines of geese and ducks that were feeding in 
 the distance upon the serge and celery of the shallow places 
 in the lake. I felt that my hour of success as a hunter had 
 arrived, and that my next letters to expectant friends at the 
 East would shine with the resplendent record of my exploits. 
 
 I got down upon my hands and knees and crawled the 
 third of a mile to a clump of bushes that stood between me 
 and my intended victims. The journey proved a laborious 
 and exhausting one to a rather fleshy man, whose running 
 weight is one hundred and eighty pounds. But expectation 
 sustained me, and I reached the coveted ambush at last. 
 With a heart that beat time to my excitement, and seemed 
 determined to break out and see the "sport,". I cautiously 
 raised my head above the low sand, ridge. Nimrod & Co., 
 what a sight ! At least ten thousand wild fowl were in view! 
 But the nearest line was all of one hundred and fifty yards 
 from my cover. 1 lay prone for a full half hour, shaking 
 all over with novel excitement, waiting for a nearer approach 
 
 G 
 
106 MY FIRST HUNT IX MY NEW HOME. 
 
 of the game. At the end of this time my movements had 
 evidently been discovered. The enemy broke up his regular 
 formations, and gathered in little squads to discuss the situa 
 tion. They bobbed their heads up and down suspiciously, 
 sailed here and there in narrow circles, and seemed to keep 
 up a knowing conversation as to the proper mode of proce 
 dure. At last one old fellow, a sort of admiral Drake of the 
 fleet, whose green head glistened gorgeously in the sunlight, 
 swam out toward me, first presenting one side and then the 
 other, and finally came to a full halt at a distance of about 
 fifty yards from my hiding place. 
 
 My nervousness had now fearfully increased. I shook all 
 over, like one with the double-breasted ague. Finally I 
 managed to rest my rifle upon a dead limb, and tried to take 
 aim. But my vision seemed to blur every object. In vain 
 I tried to bring the muzzle of my piece upon the intended 
 victim. There seemed to be four barrels to my rifle, while 
 about fourteen " sights 7 waltzed up and down, backward and 
 forward, and all around the end thereof! 
 
 At last I managed to pull trigger at a wild and desperate 
 venture. A sharp crack, and then I looked out anxiously 
 for the effect. The old drake raised himself up on his hind 
 legs, gave his wings a few flaps and settled down again 
 quietly in the same spot. After two or three minutes of 
 effort I managed to get another cartridge into the " death- 
 dealing" weapon. With increased trepidation I sent another 
 bullet after that invulnerable, imperturbable green-headed 
 monster ! He acknowledged the compliment precisely as at 
 first ! I fired two more, shots in quick succession, with the 
 same pantomime as the afterpiece from the party of the first 
 part ! Finding that the cuss was inclined to be facetious at" 
 my expense, I retired from the scene in disgust, and plunged 
 
MY FIRST HUNT IN MY NEW HOME. 107 
 
 into the forest followed by a most awful din of " quack/ 
 " quack," " quack ! " from the whole company ! 
 
 Just as the gloom and silence of the woods began to deepen 
 around me, and while absorbed in meditation over the obdu 
 racy of Michigan ducks, a fearful screech issued from a lofty 
 hemlock, right over my head ! In an instant I felt bodily 
 petrified to the spot, but with every mental faculty sharpened 
 to an intensity never felt before. All that my youthful days 
 had ever heard or read about panthers, came flashing back 
 upon memory. I remembered how the treacherous varmints 
 would lay crouched upon huge limbs, and as the weary trav 
 eler passed under, a scream, followed by an instantaneous 
 spring, heralded his doom ! The hair of my head stood up, 
 like that of the chap who saw the vision in Job. The rifle 
 dropped from my nerveless grasp ! The " mighty hunter " 
 was as helpless as a child in the presence of this sudden and 
 unseen danger ! Romance had fled at the first approach of 
 reality. 
 
 The seconds thus passed seemed like hours in duration. 
 Slowly my numbed physical faculties recalled themselves to 
 partial activity. I raised my eyes to the fascinating point of 
 danger, just as the horrible sound was repeated ! 
 
 And there was the forest-fiend in full view ! It was the 
 limb of a tall pine tree, the body of which had blown over 
 against an adjacent hemlock, and as the wind swayed the sup 
 port, the friction of the infernal limb gave forth the sound 
 that had so paralyzed my faculties ! 
 
 The discovery brought instantaneous relief; and with an 
 attempt at a smile, which was not as successful as one inter 
 ested could have wished, I picked up my rifle and resumed 
 the hunt. 
 
 About a mile further on I passed the cabin of a wood 
 chopper ; and leading directly from a little outlying shed I 
 
108 MY FIRST HUNT IN MY KEW HOME. 
 
 discovered, in the light snow which still remained in the 
 woods, the fresh track of a deer ! It was of unusually large 
 size, and I set it down as having been made by an immense 
 buck. Having but a vague, city idea of the animal and his 
 appetites and habits, I surmised that the prowler had been 
 depredating upon the poor man s henroost, and in this thought 
 sought justification in an attempt to slay him, although the 
 law then protected such game as " out of season." 
 
 And so I pursued the track with all the excitement of a 
 novice in the hunting business, anxious to bring down an 
 illustrious antlered denizen of the wilds. At intervals all 
 along the trail I could see where the animal had rooted the 
 snow away, that he might reach the food beneath, and these 
 signs at last became so fresh that I knew a few minutes more 
 must bring on the crisis. All of a sudden I saw a move 
 ment in the thick undergrowth a short distance ahead ! This 
 discovery brought on the " buck ager," as the natives denom 
 inate that shaking attack which always seizes upon the hunter 
 when called to confront his first deer, still I pushed cautiously 
 forward, my heart sounding like the rapid thumping of shore 
 water under a beached canoe. 
 
 All at once I saw that the track had left the old lumber trail, 
 and turned to the left into the woods. I stopped a moment to 
 reconnoitre. Suddenly with a loud succession of grunts, the 
 enemy leaped from behind a huge hemlock into the middle of 
 the road, and drew up in crescent-shaped order of battle, the 
 concave inclining outward ! Her tusks rattled away like the 
 castinets of a negro minstrel, only the sounds were those of 
 alarm, rage and defiance. Judging from her double battery 
 of hea*ry guns, she must have left a large family at home 
 while she went out to forage. You ought to have seen this 
 " hunter " take to a tree ! The movement showed timidity, 
 and the enemy became emboldened thereby, and at once 
 
MY FIRST HUNT IN MY NEW HOME. 109 
 
 pushed the advantage aggressively. She came on sideways, 
 like a hog for war ! Every separate bristle stood straight up, 
 like 1 o clock ! 
 
 " Piggy, piggy, poor old piggy," I exclaimed, in the most 
 seductive tones I could get through my chattering teeth. 
 But the fiend was proof against such gentle blandishments, 
 and moved on my works, slowly but determinedly. She was 
 now within a few feet of my tree, with the foam dropping 
 from her champing jaws ! 
 
 Well, beloved reader, I did what many a brave man has 
 done before, in the face of overwhelming odds. I took to 
 my heels through the woods ! With fierce grunts of tri 
 umph, the enemy came on in pursuit. A limb knocked off 
 my hat, and another nearly knocked out an eye. But true 
 courage is not disconcerted by trifles, and my short legs did 
 their duty manfully. The " time " I made, notwithstanding 
 the bad condition of the track, is a marvel to me even unto 
 this day. In a little while the sounds of pursuit grew fainter 
 and fainter, and at length entirely ceased. The victory was 
 mine ! 
 
 But I got lost in the woods, and wandered around for 
 hours, in helpless bewilderment. Just as I was about giving 
 out in utter despair, the sound of the great lake struck its 
 joyous tones to my heart, and afforded me a clue through the 
 labyrinth. I soon reached its welcome shore, and then knew 
 my way. 
 
 I entered my home just after dark, hatless, clothes torn to 
 tatters, and soaked, fore and aft, in blood by the brambles. 
 
 When I had related my adventure to the family, my wife, 
 who is of an affectionate disposition, kindly complimented 
 me as being the " biggest fool in the settlement ! " 
 
 " You re a pretty hunter, you are," she continued, " don t 
 know a hog from a deer ! " 
 
110 MY FIRST HUNT IX MY NEW HOME. 
 
 Sympathetic reader, the tracks of the two distinct animals 
 are very similar to an unpracticed eye, only that of the grown 
 swine is much the largest. But then, you see, I thought the 
 deer I was after was such a thundering big fellow ! Pray 
 excuse the mistake. 
 
MY MAPLE. 
 
 IT stands right against the little western window of my 
 cabin, does the maple tree of which I write. How the 
 fierce fire spared it in its hunger, that time the clearing was 
 first burned over, and log, and limb, and underbrush shrank 
 into ashes in an instant, is yet an unsolved mystery to the 
 mind untutored in wild western phenomenon. But here it 
 stands, the sole remaining living representative of what was 
 three years ago sixteen acres of primeval forest. The deso 
 lation was accomplished the year before I had left my eastern 
 home to enter upon the forty acres of which this clearing is 
 a part. My maple alone stands, untouched and vigorous, 
 amid the charred and ashy desolation of its surroundings. 
 
 When the snows of the long northern winter have at last 
 yielded to the encroachments of the later spring upon their 
 sovereignty, how I love to sit and watch the swelling buds of 
 my lonely maple, unfolding toward the green leaf, and to see 
 their shadows deepening, day by day, upon the little carpet of 
 white clover beneath. June comes in its season and brings 
 my sturdy little maple a rich garniture of green, which the 
 cunning dew drop loves to gather upon when the night 
 comes on, to be burnished into diamonds by the morning 
 sun. And then the little birds corne from the far South, and 
 seek out even here the homes of rude, uncultivated men, and 
 awaken with music those old memories of other lands that 
 so sadden the heart and purify the soul of the wanderer. 
 
 There was one little fellow a very little fellow who came 
 early last Summer and took a squatter title to my maple. 
 
112 MY MAPLE. 
 
 And all the beautiful days would he hop from twig to twig, 
 peering under the leaves for tiny insects. Ah ! has Nature, 
 in all her ways, no exception to the law of Destroyer and 
 Victim ? 
 
 This little bird of mine is all over bottle green, except a 
 narrosv clerical streak of white about his throat, and an un 
 dertaker s patch of regulation mourning at the termination of 
 his tail. He has a keen, inquisitive little eye, that finds the 
 food that has just escaped the careless search of the restless 
 little wren that belligerent marauder upon the bailiwick of 
 all the other feathered tribes, from hawk to humming-bird. 
 
 Sometimes my bird of the maple will hop out cautiously 
 to the very end of the limb nearest my window, within a few 
 feet of my manuscript, turn his little black eye curiously and 
 inquiringly into my face, as though he thought I must be 
 hungry, and in need of the still fluttering miller he holds in 
 his little bill. 
 
 One morning my little melodist brought a companion with 
 him from the forest, of his own kind, but of a soberer hue. 
 And wasn t that thereafter a happy couple ! Side by side 
 in their leafy covert would they sit all the matin morning, 
 and sing and twitter lovingly to each other, dart at intervals, 
 like animated emeralds, into the sunlight, then back again 
 into their home by my window. All this was a new joy to 
 me. Dear reader, if you ever come to live alone in the 
 solemn wilderness, you will be glad to find companionship in 
 humble and unregarded things. 
 
 One day I noticed that my little friends were unusually 
 restless, as though agitated by the near pressure of some 
 important event. As I watched their amusing earnestness of 
 demonstration toward each other, they sallied off, and in a 
 few moments after I had resumed my writing, I was inter 
 rupted by a muffled twitter. Glancing at my maple, behold 
 
MY MAPLE. 113 
 
 my little friends, with each a shred of building material in 
 its bill ! My birdies had been getting married and were pre 
 paring for the consequences ! 
 
 Well, the nuptial nest was finally completed, and Mrs. 
 Green did her duty in the premises. By poking my rifle 
 into the tree, and displacing a few interlaced branches, I was 
 rejoiced with a view of four dear little eggs of deep blue, 
 mottled with irregular brown spots. And upon these did 
 Mrs. Green sit, day by day, rarely leaving her maternal treas 
 ures, Mr. Green industriously bringing her the nicest fat 
 grubs that an adjacent sward afforded. 
 
 And wasn t little Mr. Green jolly ! Hour by hour would 
 he sit 
 
 " Atilt like a blossom, amid the leaves, 
 
 And let his illumined being o errun, 
 
 With the deluge of summer it receives. 
 
 His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
 
 And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings. 
 
 He sings to the wide world and she to the nest. 
 
 In the nice ear of Nature, which song is the best?" 
 
 But I weary the impatient reader, and I fear but few others 
 peruse these musing vagaries of mine, and so I will not push 
 this picture to completion. A beautiful and instructive finale 
 remains undisclosed in the inner recesses of memory. Some 
 few souls of clearer mould wish I had proceeded, and to pun 
 ish such for being less gross than their fellows, I drop my 
 birdies out of sight. 
 
 The summer by the Great Lake is gone, and taken with it 
 the beauty and the glory of clearing and forest. My eyes are 
 fixed tearfully upon my maple. Its branches are bare and 
 verdureless, save where here and there upon a moaning limb 
 a yellow and withered leaf clings to its sapless stem, as 
 though reluctant to go down to the cold and pitiless earth. 
 
114 MY MAPLE. 
 
 But even as I gaze, one by one these last lingering creations of 
 the summer shower and sunshine drop silently downward, are 
 caught up by the autumnal winds and eddied onward beyond 
 the ken of my tearful vision. 
 
 And even thus from the trce"*of life have the companions of 
 my boyhood passed into the oblivion of the grave. The sum 
 mer sun comes and goes, my maple puts on and off its green 
 garniture, but to the associates of my youth there is no 
 earthly resurrection. Good men tell us of a happy land be 
 yond the dark river, where pain, nor death, nor sorrow never 
 enter, and where the trees ever bloom by the waters of eternal 
 life. Happy is he who has faith in these things, for to him 
 Death is but the janitor who holds in trust the key of his 
 eternal heritage. 
 
ANOTHER INTERESTING INTERVIEW 
 WITH THE "OLD SETTLER." 
 
 THE snow storm had lasted three days, and was still doing 
 its best to hide from the eye of man all the work of his 
 hands. The fences had disappeared. The drifts had envi 
 roned the few cabins of the clearing, even to the eaves of the 
 roof. The wreaths of smoke from the roaring fires beneath 
 were scarcely discernible through the white siftings of the 
 dark clouds, as the winds roared, and howled, and whistled, 
 and screeched in the maddened play of the tempest. The 
 mighty hemlocks swayed to and fro like drunken men, and 
 the solemn meanings of the agonized lake mingled in the 
 elemental convulsion, sounding like a dirge from eternity 
 over a shaken and endangered world. 
 
 " Surely," said I, in a congratulatory mental expression, 
 " mine adversary will not trouble me to-day, and the train 
 of thought I am exercising for my pet new story will receive 
 no fatal interruption from the thoughtless garrulity of my 
 distant neighbor, the " Old Settler." 
 
 So thinking, and fortified by the thought, I seated my 
 self at my little pine table, scattered around my last few 
 sheets of paper one by one, that the whole entablature might 
 have that slovenly literary appearance which is supposed to 
 mark the indifference of transcendent genius to the graces of 
 order; inked my pen to its hilt so that in drawing it back its 
 contents might drop blots upon all its surroundings which 
 is also another mark a black one of the unaffected genius 
 of your true romance writer ; ran my finger through the bald 
 
116 ANOTHER INTERVIEW WITH THE 
 
 place on the top of my head, " where the hair used to grow ;" 
 put on the regulation frown, and the troubled look which 
 distinguishes our tribe when desirous of being " interesting" 
 in the sight of the softer sex, and then bent over to the work 
 before me, the initial chapter of my new " thrilling" story. 
 
 Imagination was propitious and poured out her wealth of 
 romance faster than my pen could invoice her generous 
 donations. Just as I had inked the entrance of the lovely 
 Georgiana "VVilhelmina Jenkins upon the stage, leaning upon 
 the arm of Charles Augustus Henry de Leatherhead, a sound 
 outside my cabin sent my heated fancy down into the bulb of 
 zero. 
 
 "And my heart in its leap stood still, like a frozen waterfall !" 
 
 Yes, there was no mistaking either the song or the 
 singer, as these lines cut their way, sharp and ringing, through 
 the frosty air : 
 
 " I fought with General Sherman, 
 
 For the flaer of Uncle Sam, 
 And we marched through Georgia 
 Just like ad 1" 
 
 It was the "Old Settler" that here lifted the latch and 
 stood before me, six feet three inches in his snow shoes ! 
 
 " Kinder rough out this mornin !" was his opening saluta 
 tion. " Reckon your fellers what s a haulin saw-logs down 
 by the old Ingun trail won t make morn n a half day of it. 
 Oxen ain t worth much on a pull of forty inches of snow to 
 the square foot on a dead level, leavin out the big drift at the 
 head of the gorge. Better go and tell em to call it half a 
 day, neighbor, or I ll bedurned if them Norweegin scalawags 
 won t fool around there, makin a big fuss, and doin nothin , 
 
117 
 
 and then charge for a hull day. You don t know them fur- 
 rin chaps that hev dropped down this way from the old coun 
 try as well as you will after a while, and I don t want to see 
 you fooled out of your money by no sich. When you give 
 me that new hat last summer, when the ? tater bugs was doin 
 their level best on a short notice, I made up my mind to look 
 out a little arter your interests." 
 
 I had thus far paid no attention to my tormentor, except a 
 cold nod of recognition at his entrance^ but pretended to be 
 engaged in the hopeless task of continuing my writing. Ob 
 serving that I made no response to his kindly suggestion in 
 reference to the men in my employ, he drew a chair toward 
 the stove, squirted a gill of tobacco juice upon that useful 
 servitor of a cold cabin, which instantly resented the indig 
 nity by a fierce and prolonged hiss. 
 
 The Old Settler sat a few moments in meditative silence, 
 and then broke forth with : 
 
 " Pears to me, mister, that you m a leetle huffy this 
 mornin ." 
 
 " To tell you the truth, my friend," I rejoined, " you have 
 ome in upon me just as I was engaged on a very particular 
 task of writing that I am anxious to finish to-day, and really 
 I cannot afford the time at present for that neighborly talk 
 that would be so agreeable under ordinary circumstances. 
 But to-day you will have to excuse me." 
 
 "Jes so, mister, jes so ! Bizness afore pleasure is the sap- 
 lin that s always safe to tie to. But it don t make the least 
 mite of difference to me. I kin talk jist as well to a feller 
 when he s a writin, as when he aint. The screechin of that 
 pen of your n don t flusterfy me a bit. I kin do pretty much 
 all the talkin while you go on with the writin ." 
 
 I here resumed my work with wild determination, and the 
 Old Settler pulled forth a plug of real Virginia " niggar 
 
118 ANOTHER INTERVIEW WITH THE 
 
 head " from his pouch, shaved .off a few slices with his hunt 
 ing knife, filled his short dingy pipe, lit it, and puffed away 
 for a few seconds in mollified silence. But a thought sud 
 denly insisted upon utterance, and removing his pipe from his 
 mouth he resumed his interruptions thus : 
 
 " Mister, I was over to Bear Lake last Sunday to set my 
 otter traps, when I met Jim Huffman, who was goin down to 
 Shelby with a thunderin big buck on his bob-sled, which he 
 had popped over that mornin at the lower licks. And Jim 
 up and axed me what your fust name was, as he wanted to 
 git the schoolmaster to write a letter for him about hirein 
 out to you to do that loggin on the south side of your forty. 
 What mout your fust name be ? " 
 
 I threw myself back in my chair, and in a tone half indig 
 nant, half despairing, exclaimed : 
 
 " Bored ! my first name is Bored \ just at present." 
 
 The Old Settler replaced his pipe in his mouth, gave a few 
 vigorous sucks by way of reviving its dying embers, mused 
 a moment, and then said : 
 
 " Are you any a kin to the Bords down about Muskegon ?" 
 
 This was about the last feather, and I could make no 
 response. The Old Settler must have observed the despair of 
 my expression, for he said, in a kindly and encouraging tone : 
 
 " Don t mind me, neighbor Bord. Go on with that job of 
 writin . It s jist the same to me if you talk back or don t 
 talk back. I reckon I know what belongs to manners, and 
 when a man is busy I don t expect him to strike his axe in a 
 stump and set down on the log to talk on my account. That s 
 Pete Higgins, that is, and I don t keer a dead coon for the 
 best man livin , eny furder then civilty is concerned." 
 
 A new stratagem here suggested itself as a last resort to my 
 painfully bewildered senses. I remembered that this imper 
 turbable monster this uncouth Hercules of the woods had 
 
119 
 
 informed me on a previous occasion that he had learned to 
 read a little while in the army. There was a bound volume 
 of LittelPs Living Age upon my table, and it might be possi 
 ble to get him interested in some one of its pages. I pushed 
 the book toward him, and with a seductive but false smile, 
 spoke the horrible man, thus : 
 
 " My dear friend and neighbor, here is a book of many in 
 teresting facts. I know you cannot fail to become interested 
 in it ." 
 
 My tormentor stretched forth his hairy, horny, brawny 
 hand, and took the proffered volume, and I resumed my writ 
 ing, hopeful that a diversion in my favor had at last been ac 
 complished. But this hope soon proved to be 
 
 "Like the snowflake on the river, 
 A moment bright, then gone forever ! " 
 
 A grunt of dissatisfaction again called my attention from my 
 manuscript to my visitor. I looked up. He had just fin 
 ished spelling out the name upon the back of the book, and 
 a look of unutterable contempt was fast spreading over his 
 hard features. He pushed the volume back toward me with 
 a gesture of disgust : 
 
 " Mister," he exclaimed, " the feller what writ that book is 
 a durn d eternal humbug ! Little Livin Agee II The little 
 agee may do well enough for them chaps in the East, what 
 ain t got stuff enough about em to keep their backbones 
 straight, and who a right smart Western wind would blow 
 out of their boots, and snap their pipe-stem legs into inch 
 pieces, but no little agee for me. When one of us fellers out 
 here git anything onnateral we want it big, acordin to the 
 country. 
 
 " L-i-t-t-l-e livin agee ! And had to go and write a book 
 about a thing that was no great shakes, no how ! The poor 
 
120 ANOTHER INTERVIEW WITH THE "OLD SETTLER." 
 
 Yankee slink, there ain t man enough in him to face a wood- 
 chuck. I ll bet all my winter s hunt that my old woman, 
 who is now well onto sixty years, can take that chap by the 
 back of the neck and snap his toe nails off !" 
 
 The old settler paused a moment, but the expression of dis 
 gust upon his face continued to deepen. He shook his head 
 slowly from side to side, by way of emphasis to the contempt 
 that was evidently gathering strength within him. At length 
 he looked up, and seeing me in the attitude of despair, ex 
 claimed : 
 
 " Go on with that writin , Mister. I can talk all day, and 
 if all the little livin agee chaps in the East was a writin 
 books right under my nose, it wouldn t make me forgit a 
 word what I wanted to say." 
 
 Again he stopped, again shook his head in a most dissat 
 isfied manner, and grunted forth his suppressed indignation. 
 His silence continued for several minutes, and observing that 
 his eyes Avere closed, and the motion of his head had subsided 
 into only an occasional jerk backward, I fancied that my tor 
 mentor had sought in sleep a temporary refuge from the pain 
 ful consideration of a subject that had so disturbed him. I 
 cautiously resumed my pen, and recommenced work upon 
 my new story. But I had scarcely penned a dozen words, 
 when he suddenly wheeled his chair around in front of me, 
 and opened his oral battery with renewed vigor. 
 
 " I wonder if that slack-twisted Yankee cuss ever heard of 
 the big shakin agee ? When I lived in Ingeeana I had it 
 nigh onto leven months at a stretch. I ain t no child, to 
 sniffle and whimper at what can t be helped, but that rather 
 fetched me. 
 
 " Neighbor Bord, at the eend of the fust six months I hadn t 
 meat enough on these bones to tempt a starved wolf, and I 
 used to shake the children out of bed, some nights when 
 
ANOTHER INTERVIEW WITH THE " OLD SETTLER." 121 
 
 it was extra bad, until at last the old woman lied to make 
 em sleep on the floor, without any kivers. Every durned 
 rag in the cabin, and all the deer skins, hed to be piled on 
 me to keep me from freezing and tied on with the clothes line 
 at that ! 
 
 " Well, I hadn t been able to earn a cent in all this time 
 and at last everything in the house was eat up. And the 
 children began to come around where I would be a mopin 
 
 when once in awhile I had an off day from the d shakes, 
 
 and ask me for a piece of bread. And the oldest one looked 
 wolfish-like out of his eyes, when the baby toddled near him. 
 So my wife sed to me one day, l Pete/ sed she, i youVe al 
 ways been a good husband to me, except sometimes when I 
 was cross myself, and unreasonable, but I know neither of 
 us really meant it. But you ain t much stronger now than 
 little Sis, and if splittin shingle bolts was five dollars a cord, 
 you couldn t earn a loaf of bread a week. But something 
 must be done, or Pete will eat up the baby right before our 
 eyes. I ve been thinkiii about this until I ve had to go out 
 doors behind the cabin and have a good cry where none of 
 you could see me. But this morning when I went out into 
 the woods to see if I could t find a few late berries, I came 
 across something that will fill the meal barrel, and get some 
 pork, and perhaps a little tea and sugar for you. I won t tell 
 you now, but in the morning, when you feel the shakes 
 coming on, just let me know. 
 
 " Well, friend Bord, this kind of cheered me up, but what 
 on airth the old woman meant I couldn t begin to guess. 
 But next mornin , just as daylight was breakin into the clear 
 ing, I felt the old crawl agoin up and down my back. I 
 waked up my wife, and told her that I know d that there was 
 an old he shake a comin on that would likely rattle all the 
 bones out of my body. 
 
 H 
 
122 ANOTHER INTERVIEW WITH THE "OLD SETTLER. 7 
 
 " She to once helped me out of bed, and I made out to git 
 on my poor old ragged trowsers that was too rotten to mend, 
 and out of doors I staggered, leaning on her shoulder. We 
 tottered on for about half a mile, stoppin 7 to rest once in 
 awhile, till at last the old woman sed : 
 
 " Dear Pete, here s what the good Lord has provided for 
 us in our great distress/ and she pointed to the top of a 
 thunderin 7 big hickory tree, that was covered with jist the 
 biggist crop of nuts that eny man ever laid his eyes on. 
 The tree crotched out about fifteen feet from the ground, and 
 then, for want sharpens a feller s wits, I began to see the 
 whole thing like a flash. 
 
 " But how am I to get up there ? 7 says I. 
 
 " "With that she stepped into the bushes and dragged out a 
 ladder, which she had herself made out of two poles, and 
 nailed some old shingles onto them about a foot apart. Then 
 she raised it agin the tree, but it was almighty hard work for 
 her, and it jist reached the place. Without another word I 
 crawled up, and sat down in the crotch. The agee had just 
 got to work, and in about ten minutes begun to put in the 
 big licks ! 
 
 u The way them nuts came rattlin down about that time 
 was wuth the best circus you ever seed ! 
 
 "The old woman undertook to pick 7 em up in her apron, 
 but she soon give up the job, and skeeted from under with 
 both hands spread over her head. In ten minutes there 
 wasn t a dozen nuts left on that tree, and hardly a leaf either. 
 At last the old woman sung out : 
 
 " c Pete, for mercy sake come right down ! If you stay up 
 there another minute the whole top will be shook off, all the 
 way above your head, and drop down and mash you ? 7 
 
 "I looked up, and sure enough some of the biggest limbs 
 was bcginnin 7 to split off from the body ! I seed at once 
 
ANOTHER INTERVIEW WITH THE "OLD SETTLER." 123 
 
 that the ladder would be too slow work, so I grasped my arms 
 around the tree as far as they would reach, shet my eyes, said 
 a short grace, and slid ! 
 
 " Mr. Bord, it was a shag-bark hickory, old as all creation, 
 and as rough as they make em. I was about two seconds in 
 reaching the ground, but when I struck bottom I hadn t 
 iiothin on but what a fellow is born with, except one old 
 deer-skin shoe. The rest of my riggin hung along in 
 patches, from the crotch of that old tree all the way down to 
 the roots ! 
 
 " That arternoon the old woman and the three children had 
 all them hickory nuts hulled clean, and they measured about 
 five bushel. The next day a tradin scow came down the 
 Wabasli for New Orleans, and tied up on shore near our 
 cabin, to get wood. We got a dollar and a quarter a bushel 
 for them nuts, in trade, and laid in a stock that kept our 
 mouths a going for a month." 
 
 Here the Old Settler held up a moment, and fastened his 
 sharp blue eyes upon my face, as if to read therein the 
 amount of credulity, or degree of patience, w r ith which his 
 story was received. To tell the truth, and in spite of my 
 previous indignation at his persistent annoyance, I had in 
 voluntarily become interested in his preposterous relation. 
 Observing this he resumed, with an evident expression of 
 satisfaction : 
 
 " Well, mister, what with pork and mollasses, and batter 
 cakes fried in coon fat, I soon begun to pick up a little, and 
 in less than a matter of two weeks the agee sort a gin out, 
 and I could do a little potterin about the clearing and things 
 seemed to look as if I was a goin to come around all right 
 agin. 
 
 " My wife had a kind o hankerin arter religion, though she 
 hed never jined the church. Her mother hed been a sort of 
 
124 ANOTHER INTERVIEW WITH THE 
 
 a Methodist, and though the old woman hed hed a mighty 
 hard time of it with a wuthless drunken husband, she died 
 happy, a prayin of the Lord. 
 
 " So my wife sed to me one day, ( Pete/ sed she, you 
 ought to be thankful that the Good Man has heered my pray 
 ers, and raised you, as it were, from the dead. There is a big 
 revival a goin on at the little church over to Squatters ville, 
 and let s you and me go to-night, and who knows but what 
 -we may both git the blessin ? 
 
 " Well, I hedn t hed a real genewine shake in four days ; 
 and so to please my wife, who was about the right kind of a 
 critter arter all, if she did let that tongue of hern git rather 
 loose sometimes, I told her I reckoned we d better go, and see 
 how the thing would work. 
 
 " And so when night come, I wrapped my old army blankit 
 around my clothes for I was patched from top to bottom, 
 and really ashamed to be seen by meetin folks and away 
 we went, the old woman a marchin ahead, and I a follerin 
 arter her. 
 
 " When we got there, the service was jist commencin and 
 the minister guv out a tex, and sed : What cum ye out fur 
 to see ; a reed sliakin by the wind ? 
 
 " Now, stranger, mebbee I was wrong, but this sort a riled me. 
 He looked right at me when he sed it, and I kinder thought 
 it was a slur at my agee, which hed made me nearly as slim 
 as a reed, and which the Lord knows I couldn t help. My 
 wife seed I was gittin mad like, and she pinched me to 
 keep still. 
 
 " Well, in about fifteen minutes, as true as I m a livin sin 
 ner, I felt the agee comin on me all to once, with a full head 
 of steam ! I tried to put on the brakes, but the durn d 
 thing was on the down grade, and was bound to make up 
 fur the four days lost time. And the minister kept all the 
 
125 
 
 time a yell in 7 out, What cum ye out fur to see ; a reed shakin 
 by the wind ? 
 
 "At last I lied to jist lay down in the pew and let her rip ! 
 The old woman was scared nearly to death, and tried to git 
 me up to take me out. But every time she tuck holt of me, 
 I shook her hands off agin the side of the pew until every 
 thing cracked agin. 
 
 " The thing kept a gittin 7 wus and wus. Bimeby the 
 house begin to shake, and the folks stared around, frightened 
 like. Soon half the people fell down upon their knees and 
 prayed for mercy. The preacher shouted louder than ever : 
 1 What cum ye out fur to see ; a reed shakin by the wind ? 9 
 and sed thet the Lord wuz in the work ! 
 
 "At last the chimbly which the morter must hev been a 
 gittin 7 a leetle rottin cum a rattlin 7 down upon the ruff ; and 
 then thescreamin 7 was awful among the wimmin and children, 
 jist as ef they thought a passel of reglar wild Injins was 
 around, a gunnin 7 fur scalps. 
 
 " Well, the minister was a good man, but he couldn t stand 
 everything. When the chimbly kim a tearin 7 down, he jist 
 jumped out over the top of the pulpit, and hollered : 
 
 " Breetherin 7 , truly has Satan power on this yearth ! 
 And then he broke fur the door, with the hull crowd a fol- 
 lerin 7 , and screechin 7 like mad. 
 
 "All to once Deacon Spooner happened to spy me a layin 
 on the floor as he ran by, and he stopped and sung out : 
 
 " Breethering and sistern, don t be skeert. It s nobody 
 but Pete Higgins, a shakin 7 with the Wabash agee! 7 
 
 " But the meetin 7 was busted up fur that night, and so was 
 the revival fur the hull season. 
 
 " The old woman sort o 7 cussed me all the way home, jist 
 as ef I could help it. But she was so ashamed to think what 
 the hull neighborhood would say, that it made her onreason- 
 
126 ANOTHER INTERVIEW WITH THE 
 
 able like, and as soon as her cussin feelin s bed cooled off, she 
 cried, and sed sbe was a fool, and that it was all her fault fur 
 askin of me to go. 
 
 " And now, mister," resumed the narrator of this strange 
 story, after a few furtive glances at my countenance, " is it 
 enny ways strange that I got riled when you tried to poke that 
 yankee bummer s book onto me, about his little agee ! I don t 
 know much in the way of larnin , but there aint no livin 
 man what kin give me a new wrinkle about the shakes." 
 
 And thus saying, the Old Settler shouldered his rifle, and 
 with something of an injured and defiant air, strode out into 
 the storm. 
 
 But the inspiration of the romance I had attempted went 
 out long before he did, and may now be scored among things 
 lost to earth. 
 
THE VISION. 
 
 I AM sitting alone, my deary 
 Alone, and the rain patters down, 
 The world on the outside is dreary, 
 
 And thick clouds hang over the town ; 
 My pencil goes over the paper, 
 
 My heart beats the bars of its cage, 
 And the light from the shade of my taper 
 Shows a tear-drop or so on my page. 
 
 A feeling of sadness comes o er me 
 
 A weakness of memories dear, 
 For the past, summoned up now before me, 
 
 Sits you by the side of me here ; 
 The light of your dark eye is gleaming, 
 
 In mine with the love it once bore, 
 And the years from the mist of my dreaming, 
 
 Loom up from eternity s shore. 
 
 Thy hand in my own, my once dearest 
 
 Thy kiss once again on my brow ; 
 Come closer; what is it thou fearest? 
 
 The danger is passed with us now : 
 The faith you once swore is now broken, 
 
 And we in the world are alone 
 And the words that can never be spoken 
 
 Die out in my heart with a moan. 
 
 But yet with the vision I linger, 
 
 Its shadowy form by my side 
 The ring that I gave, on its finger, 
 
 With the bud in its hair of a bride. 
 It fades as my arms reach to clasp it 
 
 It slowly dissolves into air, 
 And the hope that went out to grasp it, 
 
 Gives place to the gloom of despair! 
 
128 JANE JEKUSHA SKEGGS. 
 
 I am sitting alone now, my deary 
 
 Alone, and the rain patters down, 
 The world in the darkness is dreary, 
 
 And footsteps have ceased in the town ; 
 My pencil glides over the paper, 
 
 My heart beats the bars of its cage, 
 And the glow through the shade of my taper 
 
 Reveals a tear-drop on my page. 
 
 JANE JERUSHA SKEGGS. 
 
 [The following nonsensical, but rather amusing verses, I 
 wrote many years ago, for the Trenton True American. I 
 never heard of their being copied in any other journal in this 
 country, but about five years afterward they came back across 
 the Atlantic, in a London periodical called " The Ladies 
 Own," as original. Of course they then went the "grand 
 rounds " in the land of their birth. Truly a " poet/ like a 
 prophet, has no honor in his own country.] 
 
 IT is many years since I fell in love 
 With Jane Jerusha Skeggs, 
 The prettiest piece of calico. 
 That ever went upon legs. 
 
 By meadow, and creek, and wood, and dell, 
 
 So often we did walk ! 
 And the moonlight smiled on her tempting lips, 
 
 And the night winds learned our talk ! 
 
 Jane Jerusha was all to me, 
 
 For my heart was young and true, 
 And I loved with a double and twisted love, 
 
 And a love that was honest, too ! 
 
JANE JERUSHA SKEGGS. 129 
 
 I roamed all over the neighbors farms, 
 
 And robbed the wildwood bowers, 
 And tore my trousers and scratched my hands, 
 
 In search of the fairest flowers ! 
 
 In my holy love I brought all these, 
 
 To my Jerusha Jane, 
 But I wouldn t be so foolish now, 
 . If I was a boy again ! 
 
 A city chap came along one day, 
 
 All dressed up in store clothes, 
 With a shiny hat and a shiny vest, 
 
 And a mustache under his nose ! 
 
 He asked her to go to singing school, 
 
 (For her father owned a farm,) 
 And she left me, her country love, 
 
 And took the new chap s arm ! 
 
 And all that night I never slept, 
 
 Nor could I eat next day, 
 For I loved that girl with a fervent love, 
 
 That nought could drive away ! 
 
 I strove to win her back to me, 
 
 But it was all in vain ; 
 The city chap with the hairy lip, 
 
 Married Jerusha Jane ! 
 
 And my poor heart was sick and sore, 
 
 Until the thought struck me, 
 That just as good fish still remained, 
 
 As those caught in the sea ! 
 
 So I went to Methodist Church one night, 
 
 And saw a dark brown curl, 
 Peeping out from under a gypsy hat 
 
 Well, I married that very girl ! 
 
 And many years have come and gone, 
 
 And I think my loss my gain, 
 And I often bless that hairy chap, 
 
 Who stole Jerusha Jane! 
 
A TWO DOLLAR VISIT FROM THE "OLD 
 SETTLER." 
 
 I "WAS really pleased to see him this time. He had been 
 working in a lumber camp up on the Pere Marquette for 
 six weeks past, and had come home to keep Christmas. 
 Being about my only visiting neighbor, I felt his long absence 
 to be a deprivation. The most unpromising companionship 
 is a relief to one s loneliness in these regions, in the long 
 winter season, when the deep snow coops one up in his cabin, 
 with no resources either of amusement or labor. And so I 
 gave him a truly cordial greeting, as he stepped over my 
 threshold, and with a genial smile illuminating his rugged 
 features, wished me a " Merry Christmas, neighbor !" 
 
 After relating to me some of his trivial adventures in the 
 woods during the winter, the Old Settler stepped to a corner 
 of the cabin, picked up my beautiful " Wesson" rifle, and 
 examined it critically. 
 
 " This ere gun of yourn," he remarked, " is a pretty thing 
 to look at, but aint of no airthly account up this way. It 
 carries about three hundred to the pound, and you might put 
 fifty of them little blue pills into a right fat bear without 
 tetchin a wital part. A good stiff side wind would wary 
 one of them balls six inches to the twenty rod. It may be a 
 nice enough plaything for children, to them as kin afford it, 
 but for real shootin it ain t worth the powder to blow it to 
 j 
 
 I apologized for the offending weapon, on the ground that 
 
131 
 
 It was used in the East simply for target practice among 
 fancy sportsmen. 
 
 After a few minutes more spent in ordinary conversation, I 
 managed to get the Old Settler upon the subject of his inter 
 esting experiences as a hunter in these wilds, one or two of 
 which I have concluded to preserve in this volume. 
 
 " About ten years ago, neighbor/ he commenced, "there 
 was a store clothes feller cum in here from Shikago for a hunt. 
 His father owned the shingle mill at Pentwater, and that s 
 the way he happened to drift into these parts. As mine was 
 the only cabin on the Pint, he hed to bunk in with me. He 
 hed plenty of money, and was to pay me two dollars a day 
 for my old jackass and me to go a hunting with him. 
 Neighbor Bord, the woods was full of deer in them days, and 
 we hed a way of huntin em at nights, which is called 
 shinin their eyes. I kin ony splain it to you this way. 
 Ef you ever looked under a house, or a barn, when there was 
 a cat, or a skunk, or any such varmint under there in the 
 dark, you could see nothin ony two great shiney eyes, what 
 looked like balls of fire. 
 
 " Well, us hunters used to go out in the woods a nights, 
 hevin a long handle fryin pan, and w r hen we got to the 
 right place we would light a fire in the pan, and one feller 
 would carry it around on his shoulder, while the rest on us 
 would foller on behind, with our rifles ready in our hands. 
 As soon as we cum near a deer, the cuss would stop, aston 
 ished like, and look right at the blaze. Then we could see 
 two great eyes shinin in the darkness, and takin aim right 
 between them, was almost sartin to kill. We always tuck 
 my old jackass, which I brought out with me from Injeeana, 
 along, to bring home the deer, ef we shot enny. 
 
 " Well, the fust night me and the store clothes feller, and 
 the jackass, went out, this wus what happened : Of course 
 
132 A TWO DOLLAR VISIT FROM 
 
 he wanted to do the shooting and so I hed to carry the pan. 
 "When we got to the feedin ground, we tied the jackass to a 
 tree, lit our fire, and took a circle around. We hed pushed 
 around for ten minutes or so, when all to wunst the store 
 clothes feller sung out stop ! I looked up, and there within 
 ten paces was two great starin balls of fire. I know d what it 
 all ment at the fust glance, but before I could holler for him 
 to hold on, l bang ! went his durned old musket, and let out 
 about a handful of buckshot ! There was one onairthly bray,, 
 that fairly shook the trees all around, and made the air shud 
 der like, and when I run up, there lay my poor old jackass, 
 a kickin of his last kick ! 
 
 " Well, neighbor, I cussed that feller out of seventy-five 
 dollars for that jackass, which he wusn t wuth twenty, but 
 then I was so infarnally mad that I didn t adzacly know 
 what I was doin . He left next mornin at daylight, and 
 I ve never heern tell on him since." 
 
 I laughed heartily, at the climax of this story, and the 
 " Old Settler " seemed mightily tickled at the way I enjoyed 
 it. I stepped to the closet and handed him three or four first 
 rate Havana segars, and invited him to take a smoke. He 
 accepted them with an expression of thanks, craunched them 
 up fine in his huge paw, consigned the mass to his tobacco 
 pouch, filled a short dirty pipe, and puffed away a few mo 
 ments in silence. At last he said : 
 
 " I b lieve I never told you about shootin that bear, two 
 years ago last winter ? I told it to a newspaper chap what I 
 met at a tavern down to Grand Rapids, and he said he would 
 put it in print, and send me a paper, but I reckon he must hev 
 forgot. Leastwise I never heerd anything from him since. 
 
 " One day I was a burnin brush in the clearin , when I 
 seed about a thousand crows, a dartin in and out of the top 
 of a big hemlock, and keepin up the awfullest squallin you 
 
A TWO DOLLAR VISIT FROM THE "OLD SETTLER." 133 
 
 -ever lieerd. I to wunst knowed there was somethin 5 up 
 more n common. And so I picked up my gun and I ve got 
 the same gun yit and started for the tree. I worked around 
 among the bushes ontil I got within about twenty rod of 
 where the rumpus was, and on peepin out, sure enough there 
 sot up in the highest crotch, an all fired big bear, a real four 
 hundred pounder. Fust one crow would dart in on him, and 
 then a half a dozen would foller, and he kept a boxin at em 
 right and left, as savage as a wild Ingin. The bear was so 
 busy a watchin and fightin them crows, which kept up the 
 cussedest noise all the time, that he never looked anywhere 
 else. I crawled up to about eight rod of the tree, the bear 
 all the time a strikin out, fust at one crow, and then at 
 another, without ever wunst suspectin of any other danger. 
 Bime by I got tired of watchin the fun, and so I took aim 
 jist below the old feller s shoulder, and tetched the hair 
 trigger ! You ought er seen him come down, head foremost, 
 all in heap like ! He din nt even kick nary time after he 
 struck the ground. And, mister, that durned fool of a bear 
 thinks to this day it was them crows what killed him ! And 
 I ve got the same gun yit !" 
 
 At the conclusion of this interesting recital, the "Old 
 Settler" started up and declared that he must be going. As 
 he reached the door he stopped, turned around, put his hand 
 searchingly in his pocket, and exclaimed : 
 
 " O, mister, I lik d to hev forgot. I borrered three dollars 
 off of you to pay my taxes. I ve got a five dollar bill here, 
 and ef you ll jist hand me the change we ll settle that little 
 matter." 
 
 Delighted at this exhibition of unexpected honesty, on the 
 part of one I had so mistrusted, I opened my pocket-book, 
 and at once handed him the two dollars. He grabbed the 
 amount with one hand, and continued to fumble in his 
 
134 
 
 pockets with the other. A last he turned a worried and 
 perplexed look upon me, scratched his shaggy head, and said : 
 
 " Durn my skin ef my old woman hain t and went and 
 tuck that five dollar bill out of my pocket w r hen she was a 
 mendin of my coat this mornin ! But never mind, neighbor, 
 I ll be along agin in a day or two, and step in and hand it to 
 you. But I don t like sich tricks, and when I git to home, 
 I ll be apt to raise particular thunder around the cabin, mind 
 I tell you ! I don t keer so much about it, ony for the looks 
 of the thing. It s mortifyin to be fooled in this way, but 
 I ll make it all right when I cum a long next time !" 
 
 And so saying the "Old Settler" shook his head two or 
 three times, indignantly, at the thought of the trick his "old 
 woman " had played upon him, and walked off two dollars 
 richer then when he entered. He hasn t found it convenient 
 to call with that five dollar bill yet ! 
 
THE DESERTED CABIN. 
 
 A TALE OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN 
 
 " "1 KNOW pretty much all about it," said the hunter, 
 JL " and if you wish to hear the story, we will sit down 
 upon this old hemlock log while I relate it." 
 
 We had been on the trail of a herd of deer all day, with 
 out being able to secure a shot, when late in the afternoon we 
 came upon a log cabin within sight of the shores of Lake 
 Michigan. The low roof had fallen in, the blackberry and 
 the raspberry had rooted in the earth between the logs, and 
 decay and dilapidation marked all its immediate surround 
 ings. But there were faint traces of former flower beds be 
 fore the door, and here and there a vine of beauty and of 
 bloom struggled through the thick weeds, and entwined 
 themselves around the solitary ruins. A woman of taste and 
 culture had evidently planted and tended these, and it was 
 the conviction of this fact, so rare in this lonely wilderness, 
 that prompted me to ask the hunter if he knew ought of its 
 history. His response is the commencement of this tale, and 
 he continued as follows : 
 
 "It was twenty years ago long before the cabin of a 
 single white settler had been built upon the lake shore, all 
 the way between Pentwater and Grand Haven^-when I first 
 saw this cabin. Chippewa and Ottawa Indians held all the 
 vast country between White River and Lake Superior, and 
 roamed these forests in pursuit of game. Father and I had 
 been up in the Grand Traverse country trapping otter and 
 
136 THE DESERTED CABIN. 
 
 shooting deer and bear. Early in the spring we loaded the 
 canoe with our peltries, and commenced paddling along the 
 the lake shore for Chicago, three hundred miles distant. 
 Toward evening on the fourth day down, a tremendous blow 
 came up out of the northwest. In the far distance we could 
 see the huge waves bearing down upon us, the first one of 
 which would have dashed us to destruction the moment it 
 reached our little vessel. But we were but about twenty pad 
 dle strokes from the shore, and we soon had our boat and its 
 treasures high up on the sandy beach. 
 
 " Stranger, did you ever see old Michigan when angered by 
 a hurricane ? Well, it s a bully thing to look upon from a 
 land point, but woe to the ships and sailors who are then 
 upon its waters ! The treacherous old termagant is peaceful 
 now, and her bosom heaves as gently as that of an infant in 
 its slumbers. I have seen it thus a hundred times, and then 
 within an hour it would begin to seethe, and boil, and foam, 
 all the waters of its great depths seeming to be scooped up 
 into mountains, and hurled one at the other by the winds in 
 their fury. I have seen the clouds come down until they 
 formed a perpendicular wall, whose base rested upon the 
 waters and its summit against the sky. And all along, where 
 it rested upon the lake, it was broken into great caverns, 
 whose horrid mouths looked like the black entrances to 
 eternal perdition. And all this comes with but a moment of 
 preliminary warning, and that is the reason why old Mich 
 igan swallows up more vessels yearly than the Atlantic and 
 Pacific oceans combined, and the dead of her mighty depths 
 are skeletoned from Mackinaw to Chicago. You may walk 
 her eastern shore for two hundred miles with a wreck always 
 in sight. But I am running away from my story. 
 
 " Well, on securing our canoe we walked around and soon 
 discovered a wreath of smoke curling up from among the 
 
THE DESERTED CABIN. 137 
 
 dark hemlocks of the dense forest that lined the coast. We 
 took it for granted that this was an encampment of Indian 
 hunters ; but as the Chippewas and Ottawas have always 
 been treated kindly by our people, we had no fears for the 
 safety of ourselves or property. So we pushed at once in the 
 direction of the smoke, and in less than ten minutes came 
 upon this very cabin, whose silent ruins are now before us. 
 
 " A huge deerhound offered a snarling resistance to our 
 approach, which brought to the door a man and a woman, 
 whose appearance startled me into a sort of awe, so strangely 
 different were they from any human beings I had ever looked 
 upon before. 
 
 " I was but twelve years of age, born in the wilderness, 
 and had never seen any other kind of people than the rude 
 white and red hunters on the outer verge of civilization. 
 The man was apparently about twenty-five years of age, with 
 fair complexion, dark hair and eyes, heavy mustache, and the 
 rest of his face cleanly shaven. His clothes w^ere of fine 
 texture, wonderfully neat, and fitted to his well-built form in 
 a manner that excited my wonder and "astonishment. He 
 wore a ring upon his finger that sent forth dazzling flashes of 
 light, and a heavy gold chain led from a vest button-hole to 
 his watch pocket. 
 
 " The woman could not have been over eighteen, and her 
 glossy brown hair fell carelessly down about a face of such 
 wonderful beauty, so sad and yet so resigned, that as I gazed 
 a feeling came over me as if I had been in the instant trans 
 lated to another world. I had heard an old Catholic mis 
 sionary among the Indians of the Pere Marquette country 
 describe the saints and angels of Heaven, and now before me 
 was a realization of what he had drawn. Boy as I was, 
 whose little life had been passed in the woods among the 
 most reckless and desperate men, and who never knew a 
 
 I 
 
138 THE DESERTED CABIN. 
 
 mother s tenderness nor a sister s love, a holy feeling of 
 prayer and worship flowed into my soul as I looked upon the 
 vision before me. 
 
 " My father was an ignorant man could neither read nor 
 write but as brave and fearless of danger as any one that 
 ever lived. He had seen his father and mother killed and 
 scalped by the Iroquois of Canada, and was himself hurried 
 off into captivity by the band, and remained three years with 
 the devils before opportunity for escape was presented. 
 
 " In the woods every man s cabin is every other man s 
 home, be he comrade or stranger, to enter without knocking, 
 remain without invitation, and depart without thanks. But 
 the old man was painfully abashed in the presence of these 
 superior beings. On the invitation to enter, kindly and hos 
 pitably spoken, he awkwardly snatched off his coonskin cap, 
 made a most ridiculous attempt at a bow to the lady, tried to 
 hide his rifle behind him as though it was out of place in 
 such company, and behaved in so grotesque a manner, that, 
 forgetting my own awe for a moment, I burst out in a peal 
 of laughter. The young lady comprehended the cause at 
 once, caught the contagion, and in spite of every effort at 
 restraint, added her own silvery strains of mirth to the hila 
 rious temptation. This instantly brought my father back to 
 his independent manhood, and giving me a look that plainly 
 presaged my future punishment, strode erect and confident 
 into the cabin. 
 
 " After supper the stranger took father out into the little 
 clearing to ask his opinion about some contemplated improve 
 ment. As soon as they were gone, the lady came and sat 
 down by me, and plied me with questions all about my his 
 tory, mode of life, and future intentions. As I look at these 
 crumbling logs, so silent and yet so full of speech to me, I 
 fancy I can see her as she sat right in yonder corner, twenty 
 
THE DESERTED CABIN. 139 
 
 years ago, with her dark blue eyes fastened upon my boyish 
 face, so full of a tender interest I could not understand, while 
 her sweet womanly voice so unlike anything I had ever 
 heard or fancied poured forth the consolations of a sympa 
 thy I had never known from a human being before. Stranger, 
 you are looking ( at my eyes, I am not ashamed of their 
 moisture. 
 
 " On the return of father and the stranger, the lady ap 
 proached the latter and said : 
 
 " George, I want you to go out and fasten up that jessa 
 mine for me. The wind is abroad upon the lake and will-be 
 here in all its fury soon. The gentlemen will please remain 
 until we return/ 
 
 " They were gone perhaps ten minutes. On re-entering 
 the cabin, the man at once asked father if he would let me 
 remain with them for one year. He expected to be away 
 a good part of the time, and needed some one to do the little 
 work required during his absence. He could not think of 
 leaving his wife all alone in such a place. He would pay 
 well for the service. Then the lady came up, and putting 
 her beautiful little hand upon father s huge shoulder, and 
 looking up into his hard, brown face, with a smile that could 
 win anything without words, said : 
 
 " You will let the lad stay with me, please, sir? 
 
 " My father was rough on me sometimes, for his had been 
 a hard life, and he was very easily angered. Once when I 
 missed a bear at fifteen rod, he ran at me, and with his flat 
 hand struck me on the side of the head, and sent me sprawl 
 ing to the ground fully ten feet from him. And then the 
 flash of his resentment went out in shame and repentance^ 
 and he hastened to me, and gathered me up in his great arms, 
 and pressed me to his bosom, and cried, and cursed himself 
 
140 THE DESERTED CABIN. - 
 
 for a cowardly villain. My father loved me. He had noth 
 ing else to love. 
 
 " When the girl made this appeal, the man stepped up, 
 and taking a handful of gold from his pocket, said : 
 
 " I will give you one hundred dollars for the boy s ser 
 vices for one year, and will pay you right here in advance. 
 
 " My father drew himself up with a dignity and haughti 
 ness I had never seen him exhibit before. 
 
 " I will not sell my child/ he replied, for all the gold 
 that was either honestly or dishonestly come by. I have tried 
 to say no to this woman, but cannot. I am an ignorant man, 
 and have always lived in the woods. But I know that this 
 is no place for her, and that she is troubled at heart. The 
 boy may remain, but neither he nor me will touch your 
 money. He can earn nothing here but his food and clothing. 
 To her care I leave him. 7 
 
 " The man turned pale at this speech, and his brow dark 
 ened, but he said nothing. My father looked him steadily in 
 the eye for a full minute, turned slowly around, shouldered 
 his rifle, and without looking at me, or bidding us good-bye, 
 strode out into the forest in the direction of the lake, and I 
 never saw him more. I may tell you of his tragic death on 
 some other occasion. 
 
 " My new situation gave me new ideas of life, and awak 
 ened in me an ambition that had never before entered into 
 my thoughts. The lady loved me as if I was a lost brother, 
 unexpectedly restored. I feel certain now that when she first 
 saw me she traced a resemblence to some dear one in her old 
 home in the far east. She soon taught me to read and write ; 
 talked to me of the lowly born and neglected who had risen 
 from obscurity in her own land, and won by the force of 
 their genius wealth, fame, power, and the respect of a nation. 
 My youthful mind drank with eagerness at this new fountain. 
 
THE DESERTED CABIN. 141 
 
 She had books of the lives of statesmen, of the discoveries of 
 science, the theories of philosophers, the musings of poets. 
 Boy that I was, with a mind heretofore tutored only to the 
 chase, many of these things bewildered me, but I felt that 
 my intellect was being strengthened by the discipline of 
 thought, and I thirsted for further discoveries in the world of 
 knowledge. My preceptress was overjoyed at my progress. 
 Poor soul ; but few so good, so beautiful, so patient in a 
 hidden sorrow, ever so needed one source of happiness. 
 
 " She never spoke to me of the past, and never uttered any 
 complainings of the present. The man was very kind and 
 loving toward her, but I knew that he had wronged her in 
 some way, and I fairly hated him under this suspicion. 
 Many and many a time have I caught her in tears, which she 
 vainly strove to hide, and I often felt my own heart breaking 
 over a sorrow I could not comprehend or alleviate. 
 
 " I have said these two cultivated beings, evidently of some 
 great city, but now isolated in a cold and inhospitable wilder 
 ness as if they alone were the inhabitants of the world, loved 
 each other. If you had seen them as I did, walking in the 
 forest paths, or along the beach of the mighty lake when the 
 summer moon was at its full, with the soft waves breaking 
 mournfully but musically at their feet, you would have wit 
 nessed those sweet and tender endearments that are born only 
 of love in young hearts, ere years and the realities of life 
 harden into formality and selfishness. 
 
 " I had been in my new home about six months, when the 
 man began to absent himself at longer and longer periods, 
 often remaining away two weeks at a time. And the poor 
 lady would do nothing but -weep when the day of his ap 
 pointed return passed without his coming. She grew thin 
 and haggard, and a strange light began to gleam in her eyes. 
 For on each return the man became more and more gloomy, 
 
142 THE DESERTED CABIN. 
 
 and at times his irritation vented itself in harshness to the 
 being he called wife. 
 
 " It was early in September, toward the close of a lovely 
 day, when the man walked into the cabin from an unusually 
 long absence, and sat down moodily, with scarce a word of 
 recognition to either of us. The girl staggered toward him, 
 fell upon her knees, and clasping her arms about his neck, 
 while her wealth of hair almost buried his face and fell upon 
 his shoulders, sobbed like one lost to all hope. The man 
 rudely loosened her loving clasp, and arose to his feet. She 
 lowered her head upon the vacated chair for a moment, sprang 
 up, placed her hands upon his shoulders, and putting her 
 .sweet face close to his, said, in a low, soft, tremulous voice : 
 
 " Walter Danton, take me home to my mother ! 
 
 " The man again repulsed her, and this time with an oath. 
 
 " Then I will go alone ! 7 she exclaimed, and in her loose 
 white dress, and all bonnetless, she turned and passed out 
 over the threshold for the last time. I noticed the wild 
 gleam in her eye as she went forth, and my heart stood still 
 with terror. 
 
 " Fifteen minutes passed, when the man went to the door 
 and peered uneasily around. 
 
 " Great God of mercy ! ? he fairly shrieked, l she is gone ! 
 
 "And then he shouted Mary! Mary! 7 and the hollow 
 echoes sent back the words in mockery of his agony. 
 
 " And now, like a madman, he started for the lake. I 
 followed in the instant, but he far outstripped me in the race. 
 When I reached the edge of the forest I looked out upon the 
 placid bosom of the waters. A quarter of a mile from shore 
 was a skiff, whose sail had caught the breeze, and was mak 
 ing rapid headway. A white form stood erect in the stern, 
 and waved a handkerchief in farewell to an object on the 
 shore. I rushed down. Danton was on his knees, shrieking 
 
THE DESERTED CABIN. 143 
 
 most piteously for the occupant of the boat to return. Then 
 he ran out into the water, both arms raised imploringly, pray 
 ing and blaspheming in his wild delirium. 
 
 " At this instant the boat of a fisherman rounded the point. 
 The madman dashed toward it, dragged the old man out 
 into the shallow water, flung himself into the skiff, and set 
 its prow towards the receding object. 
 
 " The long level rays of the setting sun flashed upon the 
 smooth waters, and lit up the scene with terrible distinctness. 
 Drawn against the horizon of the wide waters was the ghostly 
 form of the woman, still erect in the frail vessel, and the pur 
 suer could be seen making frantic efforts to lessen the distance 
 between them, while his imploring cries still reached us from 
 the distance. The sun went down, and the twilight came on. 
 The foremost boat was swallowed up in the gloom and the 
 shadows, and the pursuing one was soon lost in the advancing 
 darkness. 
 
 " It is a good hundred miles across to the Wisconsin 
 shore/ said the fisherman, and the wind is coming down out 
 of the north. Neither that man nor that woman will ever be 
 seen alive again/ 
 
 " And they never were, nor dead either. 
 
 " And ever on the anniversary of that night, the fishermen 
 say a skiff is seen far out upon the waters, with a white form 
 erect in its bow, waving a farewell to a man who is making 
 frantic gestures from the shore. 
 
 " And now, that my story is ended," said the hunter, in a 
 husky voice, " we will push on for the licks." 
 
I MEET MY FIRST INGIN. 3 
 
 Lo! the poor Indian whose untutored mind, 
 
 Takes whiskey "straight," and "goes it" till he s blind ! 
 
 [Essayed by Pope.] 
 
 IN this our broad county of Oceana, there can be found 
 at this writing nearly two thousand Indians the rem 
 nants of the warlike tribes who once occupied all the regions 
 of the great lakes, and whose history is so stained with horri 
 ble atrocities upon the earlier white settlers. My cabin 
 stands right in the locality where Tecumseh, and Pontiac, his 
 brother and prophet of the tribe, rallied the red warriors of 
 the wilderness for a last struggle against the steady advances 
 of the white invader. There is an old Indian trapper now 
 living at Pere Marquette, in the county adjoining us on 
 the north, who made one of the expedition that had such 
 a fatal termination at the battle of the Thames, in what 
 is now the State of Indiana. Col. Richard M. Johnson, 
 afterwards Yice-President of the United States, commanded a 
 regiment of Kentucky mounted rifles in that bloody struggle 
 and slew Tecumseh in a hand-to-hand encounter. The facts 
 of this incident of the battle may be of interest to our younger 
 readers. 
 
 It was toward the close of that fearful contest, when the 
 centre of the British order of battle had been broken by u 
 desperate charge of Col. Johnson s regiment, and the demor 
 alized Indian allies on either wing had fled and took to the 
 woods, and got behind trees to fight in their own fashion, that 
 Tecumseh met his fate. Johnson was desperately wounded 
 
I MEET MY FIRST "iNGIN." 145 
 
 in the victorious charge, and the splendid blooded mare he 
 rode was fairly riddled with bullets. The brave Colonel, 
 feeling her reeling under him, turned her head toward a fallen 
 tree, when in rounding the top he found himself confronted 
 by a stalwart savage, whose painted face was rendered more 
 hideous by the blood that streamed down from a deep sword 
 gash on the top of his uncovered head. The chieftain was in 
 the act of ramming down a bullet when the two confronted 
 each other, but the weapon had become so fouled from frequent 
 discharges during the battle that the ball could not be sent 
 home. The savage threw the rifle from him, and with a yell 
 of hate and rage that would have paralyzed the nerves of a 
 less brave antagonist, seized his tomahawk and hurled it at 
 his enemy. But at the same instant Col. Johnson snatched 
 his remaining pistol from its holster, and pulled the trigger 
 full at the broad breast of the herculean warrior. Tecum- 
 seh, who was making a dash for his enemy, stopped, stag 
 gered for a instant, stooped down, groping blindly for his rifle, 
 then drew his majestic form up straight to the perpendicular, 
 uttered a loud yell of defiance, sprang upward into the air, 
 and came down upon his face dead. At the same instant 
 the gallant mare sank slowly upon her haunches, swayed a 
 moment, and rolled over with her rider, and died with a few 
 feeble struggles. It was afterwards ascertained that she was 
 pierced with sixteen bullets. 
 
 The tomahawk of the Indian had struck Col. Johnson be 
 tween the thumb and forefinger of his bridle hand, and crip 
 pled it for life. With his other wounds, he was now helpless, 
 and lay beside his dead favorite, until discovered by some of 
 his men, and carried off the field of carnage. 
 
 It seems, my beloved, though possibly indignant reader, 
 that I can never keep this erratic brain of mine to its pre 
 scribed and appointed task. When I sat down to my rough 
 
146 
 
 pine table a few minutes since to indite this sketch, I had no 
 thought that my poor pen would scribble itself into the his 
 torical incident it has just recorded from memory. I inked 
 it with a view to humor. It has strayed into a foughten field, 
 and returned in blood. 
 
 Did you ever know a man, however deficient in voice or 
 tune, who did not rather incline to the opinion that he was a 
 pretty fair singer ? He may so far doubt his endowment in 
 the gift musical as to avoid experimenting in public, and to 
 decline importunities to vocalize for the entertainment of a 
 social party ; but when that chap gets by himself in the soli 
 tude, where no man is, or is not suspected to be, he will give 
 mouth to some favorite song of his, until the echoes mock 
 him back in agony. I have been caught myself in the delu 
 sion that there was no listener, when a man, or a woman, or 
 both together, would tarn a clump of bushes suddenly upon 
 me, and then for the first time a sense of the horrible discord 
 I was forcing into the surrounding space would assail my bet 
 ter judgment, and mortification would set in at once. To be 
 honest with you, the subscriber can neither sing or whistle 
 the simplest tune to save his life, or his beloved country from 
 a war with Spain. But in the weakness of his vanity he has 
 at times thought otherwise, been caught in the act, paid the 
 penalty in the derision of involuntary listeners, and the fol 
 lowing incident is a case in point : 
 
 One day in the early October of the past year, when the 
 first kiss of the dainty frost spirit had caused a crimson blush 
 to overspread the fair face of the maple by my window, and 
 the beeches in the ravine below turned yellow with envy, I 
 wandered far out into the forest, to enjoy the luxurious lassi 
 tude which is nowhere so soothing as in the wilderness soli 
 tude by the northern waters of Lake Michigan. The winds 
 had retired to their caves, the trees stood transfixed in the 
 
I MEET MY FIKST "iNGIN." 147 
 
 breezeless silence, and not a leaf showed the pulsation of 
 life. I leaned against a huge hemlock, that was first rooted 
 centuries before Columbus unfolded his dreams of a New 
 World to Mr. and Mrs. Ferdinand of Spain. The magnifi 
 cent magnitude of my dear country stole gradually into my 
 meditations, and as my patriotism began to swell, and fret, 
 and foam for outward expression, I seized, with a fearful 
 roar, " The Sword of Bunker Hill," and knocked the solemn 
 silence into fits in an instant. 
 
 I had got about half through this melodious tribute of 
 gratitude to oar " patriot sires and grandsires Jioary," when 
 1 heard a voice, saying : 
 
 " My white brother sings like a government mule ! " 
 
 No bullfrog ever cut short his hoarse croakings quicker, at 
 the sudden descent of a schoolboy s brickbat, than did the 
 singer I myself at this frightful interruption ! In much 
 trepidation, I turned my head, and there, within ten feet, 
 stood a vision whose appearance was enough to startle a 
 strong minded woman or any other man from the inhe 
 rent courage of his nature. Lo ! a poor Inguii stood before 
 me, in all the panoply of a red warrior of the wilderness ! 
 
 But the chieftain did not exactly realize my idea of the 
 traditional Indian I had read of in my earlier days of youth 
 and romance, of whom Cooper s aboriginal heroes were the 
 types. On the contrary quite the reverse. This Lo s appear 
 ance would hardly do for high. His coat looked as if he was 
 on the way to a paper mill. His shirt looked as if it had 
 been washed in a swill barrel and dried on a gridiron. There 
 had evidently been divers and sundry quilting frolics 011 
 the seat of his breeches. There was an irruption of black, 
 bristly hair out of the crater of his crownless hat. In short ? 
 all his externals indicated the gentleman and the scholar, and 
 a man who had seen better days. 
 
148 
 
 Forcing an easiness of manner that I was far from feeling, 
 I approached the apparition, and extending my hand ex 
 claimed : 
 
 " Philosopher of the woods, how fares it with thee to-day?" 
 
 The chieftain round him drew his cloak, (only he hadn t any,) 
 Folded his arms and thus he spoke : " 
 
 " White man, if you call me a grasshopper of the woods, 
 Ingun put a head on you ! " 
 
 I was a mile from home, and unarmed. The offended 
 chieftain held a rifle in one hand, and a recently killed skunk 
 in the other. My offence was rank, and smelled to Heaven, 
 
 So did the skunk. 
 
 I do not think I would have blanched before his rifle, for 
 I had been a warrior myself, per a six hundred dollar substi 
 tute, in the war of the rebellion. But the sight of that 
 skunk, and the odor in which he was enpanoplied, suggested 
 diplomacy. A happy precedent had been elaborated by 
 divers of the present congress. I will try a little credit mo- 
 bilier upon this representative of his people. 
 
 With me, action follows resolve, even as the thunder booms 
 upon the lightning. I drew forth my pipe, matches, and 
 tobacco pouch. The irate barbarian shook his head, and also 
 his skunk likewise. 
 
 Then in my other pocket did I explore, and brought out 
 a beautiful four blacled knife. 
 
 I saw a sign of relenting in his dark eye, trimmed though 
 it was with lids the edges of which looked like red ferreting* 
 
 He laid down his rifle, but advanced a step nearer with his 
 skunk, and swung it around, as I have seen a censor swung 
 at a religious ceremony. Only the effect was different. 
 
 If I must die, I preferred the rifle. 
 
I MEET MY FIRST "iNGIN." 149 
 
 But one more credit mobilier argument remained. I pulled 
 out my pocket-book, and laid its last greenback upon the 
 heap of peace offerings. 
 
 " It is well," said the chieftain, as he " raked in the pile/ 7 
 " and my white brother can depart in peace to his kindred. 
 The wife of Come-It-Strong is weeping in his lodge ; for the 
 venison is all eaten, and the fire-water is as the early dew 
 which the sun drinketh up, and it is not. The gifts of my 
 white brother are to my heart like the strong drink that com- 
 eth from Chicago, and which eateth through the staves of the 
 barrel." 
 
 Overcome by his unwonted emotions, the child of Nature 
 lifted the skunk to his eyes, 
 
 "And wiped away a tear!" 
 
 He then put straight out into the forest, like a green-tailed 
 fly from a sugar house. 
 
 Dearly beloved, your correspondent is not singing so much 
 in the woods as he used to ! 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE. 
 
 AT any time it was a place to be avoided by persons of 
 average imagination, or superstitious inclinings. But 
 it was a very careless or a very courageous foot that would 
 willingly enter upon its paths when the night had come 
 down upon its natural gloom and unbroken solitude. 
 
 The gorge was not over one hundred feet in width, but 
 gazed into from the low ridge on either side, the effect was 
 anything but pleasant and inspiring. The great trees that 
 grew up from its depths scarcely raised their tops to the outer 
 surface, and their density gave a darkness to noonday beneath. 
 These trees were all of the gloomy hemlock. The sojonrner 
 amid the forests of Northern Michigan can now easily under 
 stand the lonely and awe-inspiring features of the gorge into 
 which I am attempting to lead my readers. 
 
 It ran parallel to the Great Lake, and but a short distance 
 from its moaning and troubled waters. And when the winds 
 were out in their fury, and swept through the gorge with ir 
 resistible and invisible wings, the roar that came up from its 
 depths, and went out into the surrounding forest, almost 
 silenced the great waves that broke upon the adjacent shore. 
 
 Is it any wonder, then, that the traditions of the few scat 
 tered settlers had invested the spot with ghostly disembodied 
 spirits, whose shrieks added to the horrors of the midnight 
 tempests ? 
 
 The gorge was of easy entrance on the south, but difficult 
 of egress on the north. A narrow deer path ran through it f 
 but few were the hunters who cared to tread its dark maze in 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE. 151 
 
 pursuit of game. The experiment had been tried by one or 
 two of the few adventurers who occasionally came down from 
 the islands of the upper lake, when the deer and bear had 
 been driven southward by the Ottawa and Chippewa bands, 
 in their annual expeditions from St. Marie and Huron. But 
 it is said that none of such adventurers ever passed out at the 
 other extremity, but quickly returned with mortal fear de_ 
 picted upon their faces. Even the gaunt, fierce Indian wolf 
 dogs came howling out in advance of their retreating masters, 
 with blood-shot eyes and piteous whines that told of super 
 natural alarms. 
 
 These facts had been so generally related to me by the set 
 tlers, that at last my ridicule at the idea gave place to a desire 
 to learn from some more intelligent source, or by personal ex 
 ploration, the true basis of this local superstition. 
 
 I could not venture alone without danger of getting lost, 
 and I was hardly prepared to let any one of my three more 
 immediate neighbors into the secret of a curiosity, that argued 
 a sort of half-defined credulity of which I was really ashamed. 
 
 And so the matter rested until the beautiful northern sum 
 mer had past, and the early November snows came down 
 softly upon the earth, and covered the autumnal leaves with a 
 garment of purity and beauty. 
 
 The subject of the gorge and its mystery had almost lost 
 their hold upon my curiosity, when one afternoon the hunter 
 he who had told me the story of the deserted cabin 
 chanced to be passing by. I hailed him and he walked in. 
 He informed me that he was on his way to the old trapping 
 grounds near the head of the lake, on the Wisconsin side, in 
 which neighborhood he expected to pass the winter. I in 
 vited him to stay all night and take a fresh start in the morn 
 ing. He modestly accepted the suggestion, observing that he 
 had walked about thirty miles since daylight, and as the 
 
152 THE SPECTKE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE. 
 
 snow had hidden the smaller logs of the forest, pushing his 
 way over -and among them was difficult and toilsome work, 
 and that he really felt tired and exhausted. 
 
 In due time a smoking supper of broiled venison and 
 roasted potatoes bread being among one of the occasionals 
 of my wilderness home was ready to be disposed of, and 
 with glorious appetites, braced by abstinence since morning 
 we two drew up to the table, and silently thanking the Giver 
 of all good, proceeded to feast upon His bounties. These 
 fully indulged in, but without gluttony, prepared us for a 
 pleasant evening of social intercourse, and a sound and in 
 vigorating sleep when weary eyelids droop responsive to a 
 law of nature. 
 
 Day had now renounced its sceptre to the hand of dark 
 ness, and the night drew its shadows around our little world 
 without, until neither wood or clearing could be distinguished 
 in the more remote distance. We drew our chairs to the 
 bright and cheerful fire, filled our pipes, and conversed for a 
 while on the usual indifferent subjects of local gossip. These 
 exhausted, I at last ventured to inquire of my usually silent, 
 but intelligent visitor, ic reference to the dreaded gorge and 
 its accredited mystery. 
 
 The hunter looked up at me with a quick movement, as if 
 to observe if my request was a jesting one, or instigated by a 
 real interest in what most men of reading and observation 
 would at once set down as an idle and absurd tale, hatched in 
 the undisciplined imagination of ignorant and superstitious 
 woodmen. Then, with the faintest evidence of a smile play 
 ing around his mouth, he remarked : 
 
 " And so you have heard of the hemlock gorge, and what 
 is generally believed to be, here among the settlers, its 
 ghostly inhabitant ? AVell, you will doubtless laugh at my 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE. 153 
 
 strange recital, as I would myself if, unknowing the facts, I 
 listened to them from the lips of another." 
 
 Here the hunter took a few vigorous whiffs at his pipe by 
 way of finishing its contents, knocked out the ashes, returned 
 it to his pouch, and began : 
 
 " A dozen or so years ago, before the hundreds of Chicago 
 lumbermen came into these parts, deer and bear abounded in 
 great numbers, and this section of the lake shore was consid 
 ered by hunters and trappers as one of the best for their calling 
 in all Northern Michigan. There was not a single permanent 
 settler for many miles around, and not a ten acre clearing in- 
 all which is now called Benona Township. 
 
 "I used to come out here then every winter, with a single 
 comrade and partner. He was a Canadian-Frenchman named 
 LeClerc, and the most cunning hunter and trapper I ever 
 met with, and that is saying a great deal in his favor. He 
 seemed instinctively to understand the habits, and the lurking 
 places of all the animals of the water and the woods, and he 
 would follow the trail of other hunters, who would go miles 
 without seeing horn, hoof, or hide, and LeClerc would return 
 laden with the trophies which had entirely escaped their 
 keenest observation. 
 
 " But the old man was terribly profane, both in his native 
 and acquired language. But for swearing he always seemed 
 to prefer the French, until the supply was exhausted, and 
 then he would replenish his impoverished vocabulary by copi 
 ous draughts upon the hardest English expletives. 
 
 " But he was a truly brave veteran of the woods, and as 
 warm-hearted and sympathetic as a woman-, in any emer 
 gency that appealed to tenderness. He finally died, his 
 broken rifle by his side, knife in hand, and a dead bear s teeth 
 closed around his lacerated jugular. But this is not the 
 story you wish to hear to-night, 
 
 K 
 
154 TPIE SPECTEE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE. 
 
 " I had heard something of the haunted gorge, from the 
 lips of old trappers and hunters, who had come down to 
 Grand Eapids in the spring to dispose of their winter spoils. 
 But as such stories were common around the lodge fires, and 
 were always listened to by the younger men with an honest 
 belief that the most extravagant exaggeration could not im 
 pair, I listened to them only for the amusement of an idle 
 hour. But as one or two men of hardier judgment, more 
 truthful, and of less vivid imagination, solemnly assured me 
 that they had personally been confronted by the spectre, I 
 became interested in the question, and resolved to embrace 
 the first opportunity to seek an introduction to the supposed 
 apparition. 
 
 " The season I came out here with old LeClerc, we built 
 our lodge within a mile of the haunt of the dreaded spectre, 
 and the second morning after our arrival we shouldered our 
 rifles, uncoupled our hounds, and started for the gorge. I 
 observed that the face of the old man wore a serious and 
 troubled look, and that not a single profane expression had 
 broken from his lips during the entire morning. I verily 
 believe that but for fear of having his established bravery ques 
 tioned, which was his only pride, he would have flatly refused 
 to have accompanied me in what must turn out either a silly 
 or a frightful adventure. But the old hunter had the nat 
 ural weakness of men of our calling and habits, and as he 
 bore the conceded reputation of fearing neither man or 
 devil/ to flinch now from the side of a comrade, in dread of 
 a ghost, would furnish a text for ridicule around all the camp- 
 fires along the lake shore. 
 
 "As soon as we reached the entrance of the gorge, the 
 hounds broke out in. full cry, and went in on a run. A 
 herd of five deer had not been a half hour ahead of us. Le 
 Clerc at once caught the excitement so natural to the occasion? 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE. 155 
 
 and with a shout of encouragement to the hounds, sprang 
 past me, and with rapid step pushed forward upon the trail. 
 
 " The first excitement of the chase over, my attention was 
 attracted to the strange features of the place we were treading. 
 The sides were almost perpendicular, while high above us 
 the mighty hemlocks leaned over the abyss, their mingled 
 tops forming so close a cover, that not one ray of sunshine 
 could break in upon the solemn gloom by which we were en 
 shrouded. Of course it was the fever of imagination, but I 
 did fancy that I felt the fanning of invisible wings in the 
 motionless air, and a rank, graveyard odor seemed to ooze 
 out from the sides of the gorge, and to rise up from the 
 mouldering, rotten vegetation into which our feet sank at 
 every step. I had heard of the valley and the shadow of 
 death, and here seemed the fearful realization of it in the 
 wilderness, and upon the earth. 
 
 " To tell the truth, a fear to which I had heretofore been 
 a stranger, began to usurp possession of my faculties. But 
 the old man had become so absorbed in the hunt, and in 
 listening to the baying of the dogs, that he seemed to have 
 entirely forgotten all his previous misgivings, his present 
 surroundings of a superstitious nature, and began to let loose 
 his restrained profanity with prodigal volubility. 
 
 " He had just delivered himself of a shocking malediction 
 against a hidden root, over which he had stumbled, when a 
 low, whimpering cry was heard a short distance ahead, and a 
 moment thereafter both dogs came bounding toward us, 
 shivering in an agony of fear, and crouched down behind Le- 
 Clerc, who was about a dozen yards in advance of where I 
 stood. The old man, who had been closely observing the 
 trail from the time of our first entering, raised his eyes at 
 this singular action of his petted and favorite animals, and 
 
156 THE SPECTRE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE, 
 
 looked straight ahead in the direction from which they had 
 so unexpectedlycome. 
 
 " I shall never fully free my vision from the scene which 
 followed this sudden action of the old hunter. In an instant 
 he stood as one petrified. His rifle dropped from his hand 
 and rattled against a stone. I could not see his eyes, but I 
 knew that some horrible fascination had riveted their gaze. 
 I hastened to his side as fast as the little power of motion 
 left me would permit. He raised his right arm slowly from 
 his side, pointed up the gorge, and sank down upon the 
 ground. 
 
 "I looked in the direction indicated. About a hundred 
 feet in advance, between two dead hemlock trees, stood a 
 figure completely enveloped in a black shroud. It was 
 motionless, but erect. The outlines were unmistakably 
 human. Strange to say, my terror had in a measure left me 
 the moment the object was discerned, and my faculties of 
 observation seemed rather sharpened than impaired. I tried 
 every mode of reasoning that would assist to the belief that 
 what I saw was rather an illusion than a reality. It would 
 not do. The dreadful apparition was too palpable, too well- 
 defined, too distinct from the nature of all of its surround 
 ings, to be classed with any real substance. Even as I 
 looked, it sank slowly into the ground, then as slowly rose 
 up to its former proportions ; a shadowy arm protruded 
 through the shroud, pointed to a spot on the side of the 
 precipice close to the floor of the gorge, the arm slowly 
 shraiik back beneath its covering, and then the object gradu 
 ally melted away and was gone ! 
 
 " I looked around upon my companion. He was sitting 
 up, and had evidently witnessed all that I had myself seen. 
 His face was very pale, but a more subdued expression by 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE. 157 
 
 far was upon his features than I had ever seen there before. 
 At last he said : 
 
 " Comrade, we will not now talk about what we have 
 just witnessed. Let us return. To-morrow we will come 
 here again, and examine the spot to which the spirit pointed. 
 Take your hatchet and blaze this tree. Then we shall be 
 certain of the place. 
 
 " Neither of us had any appetite for supper that night, and 
 the small hours of the morning were upon us ere v/e ven 
 tured to seek repose in sleep. The dogs lay stretched before 
 the fire, but were as wakeful as their masters, whining 
 piteously at intervals, as though disturbed by some invisible 
 intruder. 
 
 " But the weary hours of the night dragged their slow 
 length along, and the wished for day dawned at last. A few 
 mouthfulls of cold venison, eaten without appetite, sufficed 
 for our breakfast, and the sun was just coming up out of 
 the east as we started on our journey to try to investigate the 
 ghostly mystery of the previous day. We walked on, slowly 
 and in silence, over the intervening mile. The i blazed 7 tree 
 was soon found, and then we approached the two old hem 
 locks, between whose dead trunks the vision had been discov 
 ered. 
 
 " I stepped at once to the spot on the side of the precipice 
 to which it had pointed, and commenced the examination. 
 Nothing unusual was to be seen, from the first curious glance 
 we cast around. We were beginning to look upon the affair 
 as a delusion, or some natural phenomenon that had deceived 
 our heated senses, and I commenced joking LeClerc about 
 our childish fancies. But to be more fully satisfied on this 
 point, I turned my face toward the dead hemlocks, to see if 
 we had the right range of the spot toward which the spectre 
 had pointed. 
 
158 THE SPECTRE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE. 
 
 "And there it stood again, right within ten feet of us, its 
 shrouded figure so clearly defined, as to remove all doubt of 
 the perfection of our senses ! I touched my comrade upon 
 the arm. He looked up, and his eyes followed the direction 
 of my own. Even as we stood, in breathless silence, and 
 gazed in awe, a shadowy arm gradually protruded from the 
 shroud, and pointed to the spot upon which we stood ! 
 
 " It is strange, but neither of us were in the least shaken 
 with fear. A solemn sense of some dread, but unknown duty 
 devolving upon us, was the only sensation by which we were 
 affected. 
 
 " In a few moments the spectre slowly faded away, as on 
 the day previous. Then LeClerc took the muzzle of his rifle 
 and parted the low bushes, and matted vines, that had grown 
 out of the side of the slope, where it rested on the bottom of 
 the gorge. And then the discovery was made. 
 
 " The mouth of a cave, about twenty inches in diameter, 
 right in front of which, and pressing against it, was the body 
 of a young hemlock, of about a dozen years growth. A 
 quantity of decayed branches, leaves, &c., partially filled the 
 mouth of the cavern, and these, with the tree in front, inter 
 fered with our explorations. But we had our hatchets with 
 us, and it took but a few minutes to bring the tree to the 
 ground. The accumulated rubbish was easily removed, and 
 the feet and skull of a ghastly human skeleton were revealed ! 
 A pair of pantaloons, and a shirt, still clothed the rest of the 
 skeleton in their rotten folds. A hat lay on the bottom of 
 the cave. On examining this, we discovered a piece of paper 
 inside, which had evidently been torn from the inner lining 
 of the hat. On this was written with a pencil the following, 
 which we found but little difficulty in deciphering, the cave 
 being of sandy formation, and removed from all damp sur 
 roundings. The lines read thus : 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE. 159 
 
 " I know that I am dying, and I feel that an angry God 
 is here. In my life I scoffed at His name, and derided His 
 promises and His threatenings. In my dying hour He has 
 closed his mercy against me. Hope is gone forever, and a 
 black eternity opens before me. Should my remains be 
 discovered, the prayer of a dying wretch is, that they may be 
 removed to the burying grounds of some Christian church. 
 
 " January, 1851. 
 
 " Upon after inquiry, I learned that in the same month of 
 the same year a vessel had been wrecked on the coast near by 
 the gorge, and it was supposed that all hands had perished. 
 There is little doubt that one of the passengers had reached 
 the shore, wandered into the uninhabited wilderness, and 
 finally crept into this cave, and perished of cold and ex 
 haustion. 
 
 " We left the skeleton precisely as we had found it, and 
 returned to camp. After supper we discussed the matter be 
 tween us, and agreed upon a plan of action. There was a 
 little log Methodist Church at Pentwater, about twelve miles 
 distant, and we resolved to start with the remains the next 
 day, and comply with the last request of the unhappy stranger. 
 
 " In the morning we found it impossible to get material to 
 make a box, and so we took one of our blankets, went back 
 to the cave, carefully removed the skeleton, wrapped it up in 
 the blanket, carried it to the beach, deposited it in our log 
 canoe, and rowed for Pentwater. 
 
 "It was growing dark when we reached our destination, for 
 the lake was up in its wrath, and what little headway we 
 could make was amid the greatest dangers. We saw no one 
 on our way to the little graveyard, for it was some consider 
 able distance from the half dozen huts that composed the set 
 tlement. With our paddles we soon dug a hole of sufficient 
 depth in the sandy soil, deposited the remains, and covered 
 
160 THE SPECTRE OF THE HEMLOCK GORGE. 
 
 them from sight. Then the old man grasped me by the 
 hand, and said : 
 
 " Comrade, I need not tell you that I have been a very 
 wicked man, and of violent deeds and of blaspheming tongue. 
 What you and me have recently witnessed, is a warning from 
 Heaven to us both. Henceforth and forever I renounce my 
 evil ways, so far as grace is given me to resist temptation, 
 and I know that prayer is mighty and will prevail. Let us 
 pray for the dead/ 
 
 "And we kneeled down upon the new made grave of the 
 stranger, and the old man poured forth a fervent supplication, 
 with a sincerity of soul that I fear is seldom heard in the 
 great churches of your eastern cities. And then we arose and 
 departed for our boat, better men than we had ever been 
 before. 
 
 " I never heard a profane word from the lips of LeClerc 
 afterward, nor even a momentary ebullition of anger at any 
 trivial annoyance. And his changed deportment had a won 
 derful influence upon the rude men of the wilderness, with 
 whom he associated, for they knew there was none of the 
 sham of hypocrisy in the rough old French hunter. That is 
 a vice that only pays where there is refined society. 7 
 
 " And now/ 7 said the hunter, after a short pause, and turn 
 ing his clear honest blue eyes full upon my face, " of course 
 you don t believe my strange story. I cannot ask you to. I 
 would not believe it myself, had it been told me by another. 
 
 " And yet," he added, after musing a few moments, " the 
 human mind, in the learned or ignorant, the profane as well 
 as the pious, is always moved to cither clear or doubtful 
 credulity at stories of the supernatural. And how can there 
 be belief in that which is impossible ? There can be no super 
 structure, material or spiritual, without foundation. There 
 fore I hold that the mere fact that our race, savage, barbaric, 
 
THE SPECTRE OP THE EMLOCK GORGE. 161 
 
 or christianized, all have their superstitions, is proof positive 
 of a Divine cause that produces this universal effect. I go 
 further and say that all of mental action is from God. That 
 man may pervert and misdirect is another question. But 
 there can be no superstition without a reality for its basis. 
 If the dead do not live again we could not think they do." 
 
 The hour was now late, and we retired. It was long before 
 sleep broke in upon the meditations which the hunter s story 
 had set in action. 
 
 Dear reader, there are more things in Heaven and Earth 
 than are dreamed of in your philosophy. 
 
MY MOTHER. 
 
 TP IS but a week ago to-day 
 
 JL My mother passed from earth ; 
 I cannot weep, I cannot pray, 
 
 Yet never grief had sadder birth. 
 
 Adown the gloom of weary years, 
 My pilgrim memory takes its way ; 
 
 It passes shrines bedewed with tears, 
 Forgotten till this judgment day. 
 
 I see a little head at rest 
 
 A little baby boy in sleep 
 Upon a youthful mother s breast, 
 
 Whose joy is voiceless deep. 
 
 Again the shadows slowly lift, 
 
 From out the gloom of the dead years, 
 And where the sunlight throws its drift, 
 
 That boy, a man appears. 
 
 And sin and shame is on his brow, 
 A lifeless life of crime and wrong ; 
 
 Forgot, or broken every vow 
 He learned in cradle song. 
 
 O ! mother, to thy hairs of gray 
 
 Thy child brought little else than grief; 
 
 God pity those who thus repay 
 The love beyond belief! 
 
 And here, all stripped of passion s power, 
 I kneel beside thy new-made grave, 
 
 And plead His grace O ! sacred dower ! 
 The grace to bless and save ! 
 
 Send earthward from Thy holy throne 
 
 The balm that saves the soul from pain- 
 Bereft, sad, penitent, alone 
 
 Let child and mother meet again ! 
 
THE OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHURCH 
 IN FULL DRESS. 
 
 IT had been announced that on the following Sabbath a 
 sermon would be preached in our little school-house, and 
 so unusual an event created no little stir among the few set 
 tlers of the Ridge. The matrons hunted up the old fashioned 
 linen caps that they had brought with them from their old 
 homes, and which had been carefully laid away against the 
 day of possible need. The young women did their level 
 best, you bet, with the scanty material at hand, to add to 
 their natural attractions. The men looked ruefully at their 
 patched solitary suits, of a style belonging to a past rustic 
 generation, and meditated, with indecision, as to whether it 
 were better to sacrifice the little remaining pride of personal 
 appearance, to their desire to see the preacher, and to hear 
 the " sarmint." 
 
 I had requested of the " Old Settler " that he would accom 
 pany me on the occasion, and assured him that it would afford 
 me great pleasure to attend under his escort. 
 
 " Durn it, mister," was his response, " don t be a pokin 
 fun at a feller. Look here, how about goin to meetin in 
 sich trousers ? " 
 
 As he said this, he turned slowly around, and with his 
 finger directed my attention to about a score of patches, of 
 as many different colors. 
 
 I had a curiosity to see how the man would deport himself 
 at a religious meeting, and to hear his after comments upon 
 
164 THE "OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHURCH. 
 
 the services. And so I informed him that I had a pair of 
 tolerably good pantaloons that I would give him, but feared 
 they would prove much too short for his style of legs. 
 
 " That don t make a mite of difference/ he rejoined, " ony 
 so as they aint patched. I don t mind a patch or two on the 
 seat, or on the knees, for everybody here hez to wear them 
 kind. But when a feller s trousers is all patches, somehow 
 he hates to go to a place where most everybody else hez on 
 better clothes. Leastwise I do, and I ll be durned ef I kin 
 git over it. I know poor folks oughtn t be proud, but 
 human nater will go agin what it oughtn t to." 
 
 Noticing that his shirt hung in rags, and having some un 
 bleached muslin in the house, I proffered him sufficient for 
 that article, provided he thought his wife could manage to 
 make it up for him in time for the meeting. 
 
 To my surprise the man manifested genuine feeling at this 
 proposition, and the tears came to his eyes, as in a subdued 
 voice he exclaimed : 
 
 " Durn it, mister, you m a leetle too good to such a mean 
 cuss as I am. I know d them taters wuz froze when I sold 
 em to you, and ever since then I ve kinder tried to git the 
 best of you, for I sort of felt that you couldn t help but be 
 lieve that I wuz an ornary rascal. But we hadn t a pound 
 of meat, nor of flour only a quart or two of ingin in the 
 cabin, and not a cent to buy enny with. That boss in the 
 lumber camp run away with all our winter airnin s, and what 
 could a poor feller like me do ? That s why the devil put it 
 into my head to sell you them taters, which they got froze 
 because the wind blowed the snow off of the place where they 
 wuz buried. And when a man hez done a mean thing, and 
 knows it, he tries to bully it out, as though he wuz right, and 
 tries to make himself believe it, though its the dornd est hard 
 est job ever a feller undertook. And now that I hev owned 
 
GOES TO CHURCH. 165 
 
 up to that blasted tater business, I feel better, and more like 
 a man, and ef there wuz ony enny preachin goin on right 
 here, durn d ef I don t b lieve that I should git right down 
 on my knees, and pray of the good Lord to fergive me of 
 my sins." 
 
 Somewhat astounded at this blunt and unexpected confes 
 sion, I looked searchingly into the man s face; but its 
 expression confirmed all that he had said. The hard, rigid 
 lines, the bold, defiant glance, in which courage was so 
 mingled with cunning, had all been softened down in a mo 
 ment to a look of penitence and remorse. The better nature 
 of this buffeted and hardened being had obtained a momen 
 tary mastery, and the image of God was vindicated in this 
 seemingly most reckless and abandoned of His creatures. 
 He hung his head, and a few big tears rolled down his 
 bronzed and weather-beaten cheeks. Was this a passing 
 emotion, a transient gleam of the purity of our race before 
 sin entered Eden, and defiled the shrine of the Divinity with 
 which the Creator had endowed the creature ? Or was it the 
 permanent lifting up of the lost and degraded to his original 
 statue before the Master, which Christ promised to all who 
 would confess their sins and put their burdens upon him ? 
 
 I found myself unable to respond to what this uncouth 
 being had so earnestly uttered, so strange had his altered 
 manner affected and confounded me. I entered the house, 
 obtained the pantaloons, an old vest, and a few yards of 
 muslin, returned and handed the articles to him. He 
 received them in an humble and thankful manner, and with 
 out saying a word, walked away slowly, with bowed head, in 
 the direction of his cabin. 
 
 How many wretches there are, who are nearer the King 
 dom than the judgment of even good men is willing to 
 admit ! O ! ye of little faith ! 
 
166 THE "OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHURCH. 
 
 About nine o clock on the next Sabbath morning, a man 
 was seen coming toward our cabin, whose appearance at first 
 defied all my efforts at recognition, and alarmed the female 
 portion of the household. But when he reached the house, 
 and uttered his " good mornin , mister/ the " Old Settler" 
 stood revealed before us. It was just all we could do to 
 restrain our laughter, and little Alice ran indoors, and then 
 fairly screamed with mirth. The man had on his gift panta 
 loons, which were fully eight inches too short for him, and 
 fitted so tightly to his huge limbs, that it seemed as if his 
 legs had been melted and run therein. There was a space of 
 about four inches between the top of his pantaloons and vest. 
 On his right foot he had a large cavalry boot, and on the 
 other a low shoe, the heel of which showed a determination 
 to run outward and turn upward. 
 
 But that new shirt ! O, for the pen of a Dr. McCosh ! 
 As it is, my description must be tame. It swelled out at the 
 bosom like a balloon, and a roll, resembling a huge yellowish 
 life preserver, bulged out from the neutral ground between 
 said vest and said pantaloons. The collar, heavily creased, 
 unstarched, hid nearly the entire of his head, while the points 
 came around in dangerous proximity to his eyes. The 
 thought suggested itself that he must have put that shirt on 
 wrong end up ! And all this bodily grotesqueness of 
 apparel was crowned with the beautiful new stovepipe hat he 
 had captured from me, on the occasion before described in 
 these pages ! 
 
 The " Old Settler" scanned each face before him quickly, 
 and saw the evidence of restrained mirth. His subdued 
 expression of the day before had lost much of its humility, 
 still his old assurance was not there. If his heart was as 
 changed as his face, he had become a comparatively Christian 
 man. Our furtive scrutiny of his dress abashed him but for 
 
THE "OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHURCH. 167 
 
 a moment, and then with one eye partly closed, and a humor 
 ous twinkle playing around the other, he asked : 
 
 " Mister, how do I look ?" 
 
 " Like an emperor," I responded. * When we first saw 
 you coming over the hill, w r e all thought it must be the min 
 ister." 
 
 " Well," he rejoined, in a good natured tone, " I don t 
 blame you folks for makin a little fun of the old man. I 
 ruther guess I do look purty durn d curious. But it tuk me 
 and the old woman a good hour to git this riggin 7 on, enny- 
 thing like ship shape. And then she laid right down on 
 the floor and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, as ef she 
 would die, which I almost hoped she would, and between 
 laughs she axed me not to go a cavortin around among the 
 gals, and thus break the heart of so good a wife as she had 
 been unto me for nigh upon forty years past. But, mister, I 
 done the best I could, which the things didn t fit me nohow, 
 and ef you would ruther not go with me to the meeting 
 lookin as I do, jist say so, and I will go by myself, and no 
 hard thoughts agin you." 
 
 I hastily assured the " Old Settler " that the thought at 
 which he hinted had no place in my mind, and invited him 
 into the cabin. As soon as we were seated, with an effort 
 that threatened disaster to his new pantaloons, he crossed his 
 cavalry leg over the other, and said : 
 
 " Mister, this ere boot is all the plunder that I brought 
 back with me out of the war, when I fout under Old Shar- 
 man. I was on picket the day arter the beautiful scrimmage 
 at Missionary Ridge, when I seed a crow sailin round and 
 round over a little bunch of bushes, about thirty rod from 
 where I stood watchin some rebel horsemen, away over on 
 the ridge of a hill. Well, I went over to them bushes, 
 which it wuz agin orders, but I wanted to see what that crow 
 
168 THE "OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHUHCH. 
 
 meant. And there, sure enough, laid a rebel officer, flat on 
 his face, dead. There was no sword in his scabbard, and no 1 
 money in his pockets, which I sarched for the sake of his 
 family. But he hed on a good pair of new boots, and I wuz 
 about barefoot. And so I tuk hold of one of em, and after 
 tuggin mighty hard for five minutes, which the leg was 
 swelled, I managed to git that boot off. Then I tackled the 
 other, but I couldn t budge it a mite. I seed that a cannon 
 ball had knocked the knee of this leg all to flinders, and so* 
 tjie poor feller, which he was a big, good looking chap, had 
 managed to crawl into the bushes and die. Well, I yanked 
 away at that tother boot, for I guess fifteen minutes, without 
 gamin a mite on it. At last, fur I expected the Relief 
 every minute, I gin it an almighty jerk, and the hull thing 
 cum off at the knee, scndin me head foremost onto the ground ! 
 
 " Well, mister, I hed no corkscrew, you know, and so I hed 
 to leave that boot, which was a shame. I daren t take it 
 into camp with the leg in it, for the boys would hev give me 
 some durn d nickname about it, which I never would hear 
 the last of. 
 
 "But it wuz jist my luck, fur everything has seemed to go 
 agin me, from the time I wuz a little boy. But I held on to 
 tother boot, all through Tenesee, Georgee, North Carliny, 
 clear to Pottymax Court House, and at last brought it home 
 with me. I hev never wore it afore to-day, only wunst 
 when I went to lection to wote fur Old Greeley. Folks sed 
 he ony wore one boot, and that s the why I woted fur him." 
 
 The time to move for the meeting had now arrived, and we 
 started, leaving the rest of the family, who were decidedly 
 averse to close companionship with the " Old Settler " on this 
 occasion, to follow at a respectful distance. Arrived at the 
 school-house, we found about forty people assembled, anxious 
 for the appearance of the preacher. Among them were a 
 
THE "OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHURCH. 169 
 
 number of strangers from the mills, a much better paid and 
 better clothed class than any of the permanent settlers. The 
 moment my companion entered and took his seat, a general gig 
 gle went around the assembly. The mill men were particu 
 larly demonstrative, and scanned my companion s dress with 
 broad grins, and insulting gestures of supercilious superiority. 
 The old man noticed this at once, and his face, determined at 
 all times in its expression, darkened with anger. At last he 
 leaned over to me and whispered : 
 
 "Neighbor, as soon as the sarvice is over, I m a goin 7 to 
 shake up two or three of them durn d Yankee mill fellers 
 to see ef there is enny manners in em. I mean to shake em 
 good so they will stay shook ontil the next preacher comes 
 along." 
 
 He then raised his huge fist, and brought it down three 
 times, with a heavy " thug" upon his knee, looking hard at 
 the offenders all the while. The insulting demonstrations 
 instantly ceased. All the country round knew that "Pete 
 Higgins " was a dangerous man to be lightly trifled with ; 
 for in strength, activity, and courage, he had no equal in the 
 entire county, and he never calculated the odds, when fully 
 aroused by insult or injustice. 
 
 It was fifteen minutes past the time when the preacher 
 arrived. As he entered and stepped upon the low platform, 
 the whole audience was at once hushed into silence the 
 silence of awe. There appeared before them a man over six 
 feet in stature, erect, thin in features, long, white hair that 
 fell down upon his shoulders, and a port and bearing such as 
 is ascribed to one born to command. His large, eager, black 
 eyes gleamed with a strange light that seemed not of earth, 
 and appeared to emit a holy, confident defiance against an 
 ungodly world in arms. If there ever was a man fearless 
 of martyrdom, that apostle of faith was now before us. 
 
 L 
 
170 THE "OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHURCH. 
 
 "Friends," he commenced, in a low, sweet tone, of almost 
 womanly tenderness, " I am seventy years old this day, and 
 find that at last I have miscalculated my strength. I walked 
 from Pcntwater (twelve miles distant) this morning, to meet 
 you here, and became wearied by the way. The spirit was 
 milling but the flesh was weak. God tries his servants, and 
 his enemies, alike by the same physical laws. My limbs are 
 not as lithe as in the years that are past. But the strength 
 that is left to me shall be cheerfully spent in His service 
 glory to His great name! Let us pray." 
 
 The preacher, with both arms extended, stood erect, but 
 every head in his presence was bowed as by a common im 
 pulse. And then, in a low, solemn voice, he prayed : 
 
 "God of all space; God of the wilderness; God of the 
 waste places, where no man is; God of the city full, where 
 sin flaunts its disregard of Thee even in Thy temples, soften 
 my heart, and the hearts of these Thy neglected children, that 
 they may be opened to the admission of Thy spirit, and Thy 
 grace abound therein, even as the waters fill the limits of the 
 great deep. Let not the rod of Moses be weakened in the 
 centuries of sin, and shame, and crime ; for there are hearts 
 now, even here, whose waters are sealed as with adamant, and 
 Thy power alone can cause them to flow forth to vivify for 
 eternity the graces and the glories of redeemed mortality. 
 God of all, Saviour of those who will, Sanctifier of the 
 blessed who die in the Lord, show Thy power through Thy 
 servant this day, unto this people, and the glory shall be 
 unto the Giver of every good and perfect gift Amen!" 
 
 The preacher was not heard in his prayer for " much 
 speaking," but that moment there were live coals upon rude 
 altars, that had perhaps never felt the glow of a religious 
 emotion before. Faces, unwonted in solemnity, revealed the 
 thoughts that had startled the soul within. The people had 
 
THE "OLD SETTLER " GOES TO CHURCH. 171 
 
 listened to a prayer, instead of an affectation. God is only 
 with the word when the utterer is with God. 
 
 Then the old apostle took from his pocket a well worn 
 book, and read out a hymn. Finding that none of his 
 audience could assist in that comforting part of the service, 
 he sang the selection alone, in so earnest and touching a man 
 ner, that even those who neither comprehended its words or 
 sentiments, w T ere affected by an inspiration of the emotions 
 into a sort of religious appreciation that was depicted plainly 
 in their faces. For myself, I had never heard the hymn 
 before, but well do I now remember one recurring line : 
 
 " Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." 
 
 But I have listened to it since, and rendered in such low, 
 soft, sweet melody, as to thrill my soul almost into harmony 
 with the spirits of just men made perfect. 
 
 Then the preacher announced his text : "The poor have the 
 gospel preached unto them." 
 
 I have heard very many pulpit discourses in my day, from 
 the wordy lips of the religious demagogues of the Beecher 
 school, who in the motto of the shopkeeper, " study to please," 
 to the zealous fanatic who rants shockingly about sublime 
 truths which his shallow brain is incapable of comprehend 
 ing, and who approaches God more as a familiar than as a 
 worshipper. But never until this day had I heard a preacher 
 who came so near the ideal standard of my conception of 
 what a dispenser of the Word should strive to attain to. 
 There was none of those painfully disgusting exhibitions of 
 vanity of self peeping out of studied oratorical sentences, 
 now so common with the clergy of our blinded and self-de 
 ceived congregations. As friend talks to friend, earnest for 
 his welfare, did .this man, his eyes fixed first upon one listener, 
 
172 THE "OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHURCH. 
 
 and then another, speak of the Redeemer of the race, his 
 sinless sufferings for the sins of others, ending in the most 
 horrible of deaths. He told his hearers how Christ, leaving 
 the unjust of wealth, and the powerful of oppression, to their 
 own ways, went among the lowly and the despised, bound up 
 the broken hearted, and lifted the soul of the beggar, up to 
 the inheritance of an eternity ever glorious in immortality, 
 that all the potentates of earth could neither give nor take 
 away. Standing there, his tall form dilating in his fervent 
 passion, his large eyes emitting magnetic flashes that held in 
 the bonds of wonder, fear, and amazement, the most stupid 
 listener, he seemed the risen personification of the great 
 Apostle of the Gentiles. Toward the close, unwearied in 
 effort, and unflagging in utterance, he stepped from the plat 
 form, walked down among the people, raised the little child 
 ren in his arms and kissed them, laid his hands upon the 
 heads of hardened, stalwart men and blessed them, while his 
 exhortations, so full of touching pathos for the welfare of 
 others, shed a holy influence upon all present, and sobs and 
 groans from hearts that had never uttered them before, at 
 tested a power greater than that of man. 
 
 At the close of the meeting, which lasted nearly two hours, 
 the strange preacher, of whom no man present knew ought, 
 prepared to depart. He refused all invitations to dinner, and 
 to remain over night, stating that he stood in need of neither 
 food nor shelter then, and that the Lord would provide 
 against the hour of his necessity. With a parting blessing, 
 he again walked forth into the wilderness, another John the 
 Baptist, upon his mission. 
 
 I had become so wholly absorbed in the wonderful utter 
 ances of the strange preacher, that I had forgotten to observe 
 the effect upon the " Old Settler " up to this time. When I 
 at last looked for him, I discerned that he had left the room, 
 
THE "OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHURCH. 173 
 
 and was standing some distance from the door, his back to 
 wards us, rubbing an old, ragged fragment of a handkerchief, 
 in a hasty and impatient manner, over his eyes and face. He 
 had evidently been weeping, and was trying to obliterate this 
 evidence of his weakness. 
 
 Just then the mill men started in a body on their way 
 home. The " Old Settler " turned around upon them, and 
 confronting the leader, said : 
 
 " Mister, you had ought er hev thanked thet preacher, afore 
 he went away. He hez saved you from one of the durnd est 
 lickings ever a Yankee got in these parts." 
 
 The old man maintained his half defiant attitude for a few 
 moments, as though anxious that his adversary would make 
 some demonstration that would release him from the moral 
 resolution he had formed, under the effect of the preaching, 
 to forgive the previous insults. But to our surprise the 
 " yankee," who was evidently a sensible man, and of kindly 
 feelings, asked pardon for his thoughtless offence, and declared 
 that he was sorry for it. 
 
 " Durn my pictur ! durn everybody ! " exclaimed the "Old 
 Settler," as he wheeled around out of the path, his eyes again 
 flushed with tears, " ef I aint a gittin to be a great blubberin 
 baby, who is ashamed of hisself ! " 
 
 And thus speaking, he joined me and we started home 
 ward. We had walked some little distance in silence, when 
 my companion, ridding himself of a deep sigh, said : 
 
 " Mister, I aint as big a fool as you think I am. This hat 
 is yourn. I know d you didn t intend to give it to me about 
 them bugs. But I thought it a good chance to git the better 
 of you agin, and so I tuk it. It s jist as the preacher says. 
 When a man does one mean thing, the devil is always on 
 hand to coax him to foller it up. 
 
 "And," he continued, after a brief pause, and another 
 
174 THE "OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHURCH. 
 
 sigh, " I wish I was dead, ony I aint fit. I owe you ten 
 dollars fur them taters, which was froze, and five more dol 
 lars, borrered money. Now I ve got a heifer, which she will 
 come in next spring. She aint got hardly enny flesh onto 
 her bones, but she s wuth all of fifteen dollars. She s yourn." 
 
 I assured my companion that nothing could induce me to 
 accept his proposition, and that I could afford to lose all he 
 owed me, without the least inconvenience. At any rate he 
 must not think of paying me until he was abundantly able. 
 
 " I know what you mean," said the " Old Settler," you 
 want me to feel easy like, ez if I hedn t done ennything 
 much wrong. Thet won t do. The preecher told me what 
 God expects a man to do what has cheated his neighbor. He 
 sed we must pay back agin four fold. Thet I can t do. 
 Well, then, what I kin do, comes next. Mister, don t let 
 your good natur make you talk what ain t right. A bad 
 feller kin find excuses enough fur his wickedness, without 
 hevin tolerably good folks, who know better, tryin to help 
 him cheat them and hisself too." 
 
 I felt sorely rebuked at this unexpected logic, from this 
 awakened man awakened to new ideas of his responsibility 
 to Deity and before I could collect my thoughts for a 
 response, he struck a by-path that led to his cabin, and soon 
 disappeared in the woods. 
 
 I arose early the next morning, and on opening the door 
 of my cabin, there, upon the head of a barrel, was my new 
 hat ! After breakfast I went down to the barn, and there, 
 lying by the side of my own two beautiful calves, " Hagar " 
 and " Daisy," was the poor, thin heifer of the " Old Settler!" 
 
 In the night he had come and made all the restitution in 
 his power ! How many of the " converted" sinners of our 
 city churches have ever done the same ? 
 
THE "OLD SETTLER" GOES TO CHURCH. 175 
 
 I intend to keep that animal, pet and feed her well, and 
 when she "comes in," next spring, the wife of the "Old 
 Settler" shall have her as a present, if it is in my power to 
 effect such purpose. The result will be made known in my 
 next volume. 
 
TO MY LITTLE SPARROW. 
 
 POOR little birdie, with feathers so brown, 
 How do you feel when the snow conies down, 
 With its wintry mantle all over the town? 
 "Chip!" "chip!" 
 
 And the wind whistles wild round every corner, 
 And you so unlike little Jack Horner, 
 Who had a snug place in the chimney corner? 
 "Chip!" "chip!" 
 
 Dear little bird, to my window sill come, 
 For while my cupboard has in it a crumb, 
 I will fast myself, but you shall have some. 
 "Chip!" "chip!" 
 
 From the dark clouds above the white drift is tossed, 
 And thy poor little body is pinched with the frost, 
 Yet the hope that God gave thee can never be lost ! 
 "Chip!" "chip!/ 
 
 The days are now near when thy little brown wing 
 Will be spread, mid the beauty and odor of Spring, 
 And thy heart its new birth of enjoyment will sing, 
 "Chip!" "chip!" 
 
 Teach me, little bird, to be strong against fate, 
 To see through the storms of my earthly estate, 
 The sunshine that gleams through the Heavenly gate ! 
 "Chip!" "chip!" 
 
MY ANGEL. 
 
 rTHEE, O, God ! I lift my rescued soul,. 
 In holiest praise, 
 
 To bless Thee for the saving hope vouchsafed 
 My later days. 
 
 When all was but as darkest frowning night, 
 
 No kindling beam 
 Threw o er the weary waste of a long life, 
 
 One cheering gleam. 
 
 Swift to the gulf of my unblest despair 
 
 An angel came, 
 And bending o er the fearful, dark abyss,. 
 
 Whispered my name ! 
 
 Then in my leprous heart a glory shone 
 
 At Thy command, 
 And through the darkness of my fate I saw, 
 
 My angel s hand ! 
 
 Safe to the Rock she lifted up my feet 
 
 From sensual mire, 
 And purified my former evil thoughts 
 
 From base desire! 
 
 Immortal Spirit ! bless this angel bright, 
 
 So dear to me, 
 Who lifted from my soul eternal night, 
 
 And bade me see ! 
 
TO THE READER. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND : You, individually. My first 
 effort in the book line is before you, (or rather behind 
 you now) either for condemnation, approval, or a mixed 
 sentiment of both feelings. It is no hypocritical, self-depre 
 cating utterance, which holds hidden vanity, when I assure 
 you that I am not proud of the performance. That the 
 work was not undertaken from high moral considerations, or 
 a desire to add to the instructive productions of the day, or 
 to exalt the tone of public literature, is evident from the 
 careless, hap-hazard, contradictory tone that permeates most 
 of the enclosed pages. My object was to make a little money, 
 not from a mercenary consideration, but because misfortune 
 created necessity. I could have made more money, and made 
 it easier, by editing a Grant newspaper ; but then, what does 
 it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own 
 $oul! Your author thanks to the good Lord who enabled 
 him, in all his life of recklessness, to retain a fair reputation 
 for at least personal honesty is neither a Congressional 
 Credit Mobilier villain, or a low back pay grabber. In 
 other words, he is not an " Honorable/ 7 who professed extra 
 purity for the opportunity of manifesting extra putridity. 
 As this is about the only trait of character I have to boast of, 
 you will pardon me for keeping it rather ostentatiously to 
 the front. 
 
 From such a character, therefore, you could expect little 
 else than common-place, either in morals pious, or morals 
 pecuniary. 
 
TO THE EEADER. 179 
 
 That I have not, in these pages, outraged a religious sen 
 timent, or offended reasonable delicacy, is all that any one, 
 who knew me by my past life, had a right to expect. And 
 in what I have \vithin written, this negative virtue is all of 
 which I am congratulatory proud. To conquer a lifelong 
 habit of thought and expression, is a victory of hopeful im 
 port, under the proverb that it is " hard to teach old dogs 
 new tricks !" 
 
 Compact the time in which this book was written, and the 
 sum total will not reach ten days. Neither plan nor plot 
 was studied or contemplated, and all herein contained flowed 
 from a pen that was unaware of its design, and pursued its 
 course as unpremeditated thought pushed it upon its journey. 
 A disjointed medley, and an unsatisfactory whole, is the ver 
 dict of the writer s own judgment. If the reader rises from 
 the perusal with a more generous estimate, then I am amply 
 paid for my efforts in such reader s behalf your own little 
 dollar, now snugly in my pocket, being attached to the moral 
 consideration. Without that addenda, it is possible that my 
 estimate of your appreciation might lack the heartiness which 
 recognizes the "cheerful giver." Personification of unselfish 
 ness as your author is, he has the modified weakness of his 
 tribe for the root that is said to foundation all evil. The 
 man who vaunts his disregard of " filthy lucre," be he priest 
 <or layman, the same is a liar of the grandest magnitude, and 
 the truth is not in him. As this blow hits all around, the 
 established impartiality of my character is not injuriously 
 affected by this parting swing of the cudgel. 
 
 And now, dear reader, man or woman, we part right here 
 for the present. If this little book of mine, neither harmful 
 or useful, which I sent unto you with so much doubt of its 
 reception, meets with a favor beyond my own estimate of its 
 merits, then will you have conferred upon me a delight hardly 
 
180 TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 hoped for, and in consequence so much the more gratefully 
 received and cherished. And the immediate aggressive 
 result will be (for unexpected success makes one presump 
 tuous,) the taxing of this poor brain of mine for another 
 volume of an entirely different texture from the unfledged 
 bantling you are now closing from perusal. And so, with an 
 honest, heartfelt blessing upon you and yours, now, and in 
 the unexplored hereafter, receive my affectionate " good bye ! " 
 
M272147 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY