章节正文
raised it was worse than her silence had been. She
seemed to have died and to have returned to us
from the grave, and I am sure she felt that she had
done so. From that moment she took up again the
burden of her life, a burden she did not lay down
until she passed away; but her face never lost the
deep lines those first hours of her pioneer life had
cut upon it.
That night we slept on boughs spread on the earth
inside the cabin walls, and we put blankets before
the holes which represented our doors and windows,
and kept our watch-fires burning. Soon the other
children fell asleep, but there was no sleep for me.
I was only twelve years old, but my mind was full of
fancies. Behind our blankets, swaying in the night
wind, I thought I saw the heads and pushing shoul-
ders of animals and heard their padded footfalls.
Later years brought familiarity with wild things,
and with worse things than they. But to-night that
which I most feared was within, not outside of, the
cabin. In some way which I did not understand
the one sure refuge in our new world had been taken
from us. I hardly knew the silent woman who lay
near me, tossing from side to side and staring into
the darkness; I felt that we had lost our mother.
II
IN THE WILDERNESS
Like most men, my dear father should never
have married. Though his nature was one of
the sweetest I have ever known, and though he would
at any call give his time to or risk his life for others,
in practical matters he remained to the end of his
days as irresponsible as a child. If his mind turned
to practical details at all, it was solely in their bear-
ing toward great developments of the future. To
him an acorn was not an acorn, but a forest of young
oaks.
Thus, when he took up his claim of three hundred
and sixty acres of land in the wilderness of northern
Michigan, and sent my mother and five young chil-
dren to live there alone until he could join us eighteen
months later, he gave no thought to the manner in
which we were to make the struggle and survive
the hardships before us. He had furnished us with
land and the four walls of a log cabin. Some day,
he reasoned, the place would be a fine estate, which
his sons would inherit and in the course of time pass
on to their sons--always an Englishman's most iri-
descent dream. That for the present we were one
hundred miles from a railroad, forty miles from the
nearest post-office, and half a dozen miles from any
neighbors save Indians, wolves, and wildcats; that
we were wholly unlearned in the ways of the woods
as well as in the most primitive methods of farming;
that we lacked not only every comfort, but even
the bare necessities of life; and that we must begin,
single-handed and untaught, a struggle for existence
in which some of the severest forces of nature would
be arrayed against us--these facts had no weight
in my father's mind. Even if he had witnessed my
mother's despair on the night of our arrival in our
new home, he would not have understood it. From
his viewpoint, he was doing a man's duty. He was
working steadily in Lawrence, and, incidentally,
giving much time to the Abolition cause and to
other big public movements of his day which had
his interest and sympathy. He wrote to us regu-
larly and sent us occasional remittances, as well as
a generous supply of improving literature for our
minds. It remained for us to strengthen our bodies,
to meet the conditions in which he had placed us,
and to survive if we could.
We faced our situation with clear and unalarmed
eyes the morning after our arrival. The problem
of food, we knew, was at least temporarily solved.
We had brought with us enough coffee, pork, and
flour to last for several weeks; and the one necessity
father had put inside the cabin walls was a great
fireplace, made of mud and stones, in which our food
could be cooked. The problem of our water-supply
was less simple, but my brother James solved it for
the time by showing us a creek a long distance from
the house; and for months we carried from this
creek, in pails, every drop of water we used, save
that which we caught in troughs when the rain fell.
We held a family council after breakfast, and in this,
though I was only twelve, I took an eager and determined
part. I loved work--it has always been my favorite form
of recreation--and my spirit rose to the opportunities of it
which smiled on us from every side. Obviously the first
thing to do was to put doors and windows into the
yawning holes father had left for them, and to lay a board
flooring over the earth inside our cabin walls, and these
duties we accomplished before we had occupied our new
home a fortnight. There was a small saw-mill nine miles
from our cabin, on the spot that is now Big Rapids, and
there we bought our lumber. The labor we supplied
ourselves, and though we put our hearts into it and the
results at the time seemed beautiful to our partial eyes, I
am forced to admit, in looking back upon them, that they
halted this side of perfection. We began by making three
windows and two doors; then, inspired by these
achievements, we ambitiously constructed an attic and
divided the ground floor with partitions, which gave us
four rooms.
The general effect was temperamental and sketchy.
The boards which formed the floor were never even
nailed down; they were fine, wide planks without a knot in
them, and they looked so well that we merely fitted them
together as closely as we could and lightheartedly let them
go at that. Neither did we properly chink the house.
Nothing is more comfortable than a log cabin which has
been carefully built
and finished; but for some reason--probably because
there seemed always a more urgent duty calling to us
around the corner--we never plastered our house at all.
The result was that on many future winter mornings we
awoke to find ourselves chastely blanketed by snow, while
the only warm spot in our living-room was that directly in
front of the fireplace, where great logs burned all day.
Even there our faces scorched while our spines slowly
congealed, until we learned to revolve before the fire like a
bird upon a spit. No doubt we would have worked more
thoroughly if my brother James, who was twenty years
old and our tower of strength, had remained with us; but
when we had been in our new home only a few months he
fell and was forced to go East for an operation. He was
never able to return to us, and thus my mother, we three
young girls, and my youngest brother--Harry, who was
only eight years old--made our fight alone until father
came to us, more than a year later.
Mother was practically an invalid. She had a nervous
affection which made it impossible for her to stand
without the support of a chair. But she sewed with
unusual skill, and it was due to her that our clothes,
notwithstanding the strain to which we subjected them,
were always in good condition. She sewed for hours every
day, and she was able to move about the house, after a
fashion, by pushing herself around on a stool which James
made for her as soon as we arrived. He also built for her a
more comfortable chair with a high back.
The division of labor planned at the first council
was that mother should do our sewing, and my older
sisters, Eleanor and Mary, the housework, which
was far from taxing, for of course we lived in the
simplest manner. My brothers and I were to do
the work out of doors, an arrangement that suited
me very well, though at first, owing to our lack of
experience, our activities were somewhat curtailed.
It was too late in the season for plowing or planting,
even if we had possessed anything with which to
plow, and, moreover, our so-called ``cleared'' land
was thick with sturdy tree-stumps. Even during
the second summer plowing was impossible; we
could only plant potatoes and corn, and follow the
most primitive method in doing even this. We took
an ax, chopped up the sod, put the seed under it,
and let the seed grow. The seed did grow, too--in
the most gratifying and encouraging manner. Our
green corn and potatoes were the best I have ever
eaten. But for the present we lacked these luxuries.
We had, however, in their place, large quantities
of wild fruit--gooseberries, raspberries, and plums
--which Harry and I gathered on the banks of our
creek. Harry also became an expert fisherman.
We had no hooks or lines, but he took wires from
our hoop-skirts and made snares at the ends of
poles. My part of this work was to stand on a log
and frighten the fish out of their holes by making
horrible sounds, which I did with impassioned
earnestness. When the fish hurried to the surface
of the water to investigate the appalling noises
they had heard, they were easily snared by our
small boy, who was very proud of his ability to
contribute in this way to the family table.
During our first winter we lived largely on corn-
meal, making a little journey of twenty miles to the
nearest mill to buy it; but even at that we were
better off than our neighbors, for I remember one
family in our region who for an entire winter lived
solely on coarse-grained yellow turnips, gratefully
changing their diet to leeks when these came in the
spring.
Such furniture as we had we made ourselves. In
addition to my mother's two chairs and the bunks
which took the place of beds, James made a settle
for the living-room, as well as a table and several
stools. At first we had our tree-cutting done for
us, but we soon became expert in this gentle art,
and I developed such skill that in later years, after
father came, I used to stand with him and ``heart''
a log.
On every side, and at every hour of the day, we
came up against the relentless limitations of pioneer
life. There was not a team of horses in our entire
region. The team with which my brother had
driven us through the wilderness had been hired
at Grand Rapids for that occasion, and, of course,
immediately returned. Our lumber was delivered
by ox-teams, and the absolutelyessential purchases
we made ``outside'' (at the nearest shops, forty
seemed to have died and to have returned to us
from the grave, and I am sure she felt that she had
done so. From that moment she took up again the
burden of her life, a burden she did not lay down
until she passed away; but her face never lost the
deep lines those first hours of her pioneer life had
cut upon it.
That night we slept on boughs spread on the earth
inside the cabin walls, and we put blankets before
the holes which represented our doors and windows,
and kept our watch-fires burning. Soon the other
children fell asleep, but there was no sleep for me.
I was only twelve years old, but my mind was full of
fancies. Behind our blankets, swaying in the night
wind, I thought I saw the heads and pushing shoul-
ders of animals and heard their padded footfalls.
Later years brought familiarity with wild things,
and with worse things than they. But to-night that
which I most feared was within, not outside of, the
cabin. In some way which I did not understand
the one sure refuge in our new world had been taken
from us. I hardly knew the silent woman who lay
near me, tossing from side to side and staring into
the darkness; I felt that we had lost our mother.
II
IN THE WILDERNESS
Like most men, my dear father should never
have married. Though his nature was one of
the sweetest I have ever known, and though he would
at any call give his time to or risk his life for others,
in practical matters he remained to the end of his
days as irresponsible as a child. If his mind turned
to practical details at all, it was solely in their bear-
ing toward great developments of the future. To
him an acorn was not an acorn, but a forest of young
oaks.
Thus, when he took up his claim of three hundred
and sixty acres of land in the wilderness of northern
Michigan, and sent my mother and five young chil-
dren to live there alone until he could join us eighteen
months later, he gave no thought to the manner in
which we were to make the struggle and survive
the hardships before us. He had furnished us with
land and the four walls of a log cabin. Some day,
he reasoned, the place would be a fine estate, which
his sons would inherit and in the course of time pass
on to their sons--always an Englishman's most iri-
descent dream. That for the present we were one
hundred miles from a railroad, forty miles from the
nearest post-office, and half a dozen miles from any
neighbors save Indians, wolves, and wildcats; that
we were wholly unlearned in the ways of the woods
as well as in the most primitive methods of farming;
that we lacked not only every comfort, but even
the bare necessities of life; and that we must begin,
single-handed and untaught, a struggle for existence
in which some of the severest forces of nature would
be arrayed against us--these facts had no weight
in my father's mind. Even if he had witnessed my
mother's despair on the night of our arrival in our
new home, he would not have understood it. From
his viewpoint, he was doing a man's duty. He was
working steadily in Lawrence, and, incidentally,
giving much time to the Abolition cause and to
other big public movements of his day which had
his interest and sympathy. He wrote to us regu-
larly and sent us occasional remittances, as well as
a generous supply of improving literature for our
minds. It remained for us to strengthen our bodies,
to meet the conditions in which he had placed us,
and to survive if we could.
We faced our situation with clear and unalarmed
eyes the morning after our arrival. The problem
of food, we knew, was at least temporarily solved.
We had brought with us enough coffee, pork, and
flour to last for several weeks; and the one necessity
father had put inside the cabin walls was a great
fireplace, made of mud and stones, in which our food
could be cooked. The problem of our water-supply
was less simple, but my brother James solved it for
the time by showing us a creek a long distance from
the house; and for months we carried from this
creek, in pails, every drop of water we used, save
that which we caught in troughs when the rain fell.
We held a family council after breakfast, and in this,
though I was only twelve, I took an eager and determined
part. I loved work--it has always been my favorite form
of recreation--and my spirit rose to the opportunities of it
which smiled on us from every side. Obviously the first
thing to do was to put doors and windows into the
yawning holes father had left for them, and to lay a board
flooring over the earth inside our cabin walls, and these
duties we accomplished before we had occupied our new
home a fortnight. There was a small saw-mill nine miles
from our cabin, on the spot that is now Big Rapids, and
there we bought our lumber. The labor we supplied
ourselves, and though we put our hearts into it and the
results at the time seemed beautiful to our partial eyes, I
am forced to admit, in looking back upon them, that they
halted this side of perfection. We began by making three
windows and two doors; then, inspired by these
achievements, we ambitiously constructed an attic and
divided the ground floor with partitions, which gave us
four rooms.
The general effect was temperamental and sketchy.
The boards which formed the floor were never even
nailed down; they were fine, wide planks without a knot in
them, and they looked so well that we merely fitted them
together as closely as we could and lightheartedly let them
go at that. Neither did we properly chink the house.
Nothing is more comfortable than a log cabin which has
been carefully built
and finished; but for some reason--probably because
there seemed always a more urgent duty calling to us
around the corner--we never plastered our house at all.
The result was that on many future winter mornings we
awoke to find ourselves chastely blanketed by snow, while
the only warm spot in our living-room was that directly in
front of the fireplace, where great logs burned all day.
Even there our faces scorched while our spines slowly
congealed, until we learned to revolve before the fire like a
bird upon a spit. No doubt we would have worked more
thoroughly if my brother James, who was twenty years
old and our tower of strength, had remained with us; but
when we had been in our new home only a few months he
fell and was forced to go East for an operation. He was
never able to return to us, and thus my mother, we three
young girls, and my youngest brother--Harry, who was
only eight years old--made our fight alone until father
came to us, more than a year later.
Mother was practically an invalid. She had a nervous
affection which made it impossible for her to stand
without the support of a chair. But she sewed with
unusual skill, and it was due to her that our clothes,
notwithstanding the strain to which we subjected them,
were always in good condition. She sewed for hours every
day, and she was able to move about the house, after a
fashion, by pushing herself around on a stool which James
made for her as soon as we arrived. He also built for her a
more comfortable chair with a high back.
The division of labor planned at the first council
was that mother should do our sewing, and my older
sisters, Eleanor and Mary, the housework, which
was far from taxing, for of course we lived in the
simplest manner. My brothers and I were to do
the work out of doors, an arrangement that suited
me very well, though at first, owing to our lack of
experience, our activities were somewhat curtailed.
It was too late in the season for plowing or planting,
even if we had possessed anything with which to
plow, and, moreover, our so-called ``cleared'' land
was thick with sturdy tree-stumps. Even during
the second summer plowing was impossible; we
could only plant potatoes and corn, and follow the
most primitive method in doing even this. We took
an ax, chopped up the sod, put the seed under it,
and let the seed grow. The seed did grow, too--in
the most gratifying and encouraging manner. Our
green corn and potatoes were the best I have ever
eaten. But for the present we lacked these luxuries.
We had, however, in their place, large quantities
of wild fruit--gooseberries, raspberries, and plums
--which Harry and I gathered on the banks of our
creek. Harry also became an expert fisherman.
We had no hooks or lines, but he took wires from
our hoop-skirts and made snares at the ends of
poles. My part of this work was to stand on a log
and frighten the fish out of their holes by making
horrible sounds, which I did with impassioned
earnestness. When the fish hurried to the surface
of the water to investigate the appalling noises
they had heard, they were easily snared by our
small boy, who was very proud of his ability to
contribute in this way to the family table.
During our first winter we lived largely on corn-
meal, making a little journey of twenty miles to the
nearest mill to buy it; but even at that we were
better off than our neighbors, for I remember one
family in our region who for an entire winter lived
solely on coarse-grained yellow turnips, gratefully
changing their diet to leeks when these came in the
spring.
Such furniture as we had we made ourselves. In
addition to my mother's two chairs and the bunks
which took the place of beds, James made a settle
for the living-room, as well as a table and several
stools. At first we had our tree-cutting done for
us, but we soon became expert in this gentle art,
and I developed such skill that in later years, after
father came, I used to stand with him and ``heart''
a log.
On every side, and at every hour of the day, we
came up against the relentless limitations of pioneer
life. There was not a team of horses in our entire
region. The team with which my brother had
driven us through the wilderness had been hired
at Grand Rapids for that occasion, and, of course,
immediately returned. Our lumber was delivered
by ox-teams, and the absolutelyessential purchases
we made ``outside'' (at the nearest shops, forty
- pioneer [,paiə´niə]
n.拓荒者 v.开辟；倡导 (初中英语单词) - refuge [´refju:dʒ] v.&n.避难(所)；庇护 (初中英语单词)
- wilderness [´wildənis] n.荒地，荒野 (初中英语单词)
- estate [i´steit] n.财产；庄园；等级 (初中英语单词)
- wholly [´həul-li] ad.完全，十足；统统 (初中英语单词)
- primitive [´primitiv] a.原始的 n.原始人 (初中英语单词)
- despair [di´speə] vi.&n.绝望 (初中英语单词)
- arrival [ə´raivəl] n.到达；到达的人(物) (初中英语单词)
- steadily [´stedili] ad.坚定地；不断地 (初中英语单词)
- sympathy [´simpəθi] n.同情，怜悯 (初中英语单词)
- occasional [ə´keiʒənəl] a.偶然的；临时的 (初中英语单词)
- generous [´dʒenərəs] a.慷慨的；丰盛的 (初中英语单词)
- literature [´litərətʃə] n.文学；文献；著作 (初中英语单词)
- strengthen [´streŋθən, ´strenθən] vt.加强 vi.变强 (初中英语单词)
- survive [sə´vaiv] vt.幸存；残存 (初中英语单词)
- obviously [´ɔbviəsli] ad.明显地；显而易见地 (初中英语单词)
- lumber [´lʌmbə] v.伐木 n.木材 (初中英语单词)
- properly [´prɔpəli] ad.适当地；严格地 (初中英语单词)
- arrangement [ə´reindʒmənt] n.整理；排列；筹备 (初中英语单词)
- moreover [mɔ:´rəuvə] ad.再者，此外，而且 (初中英语单词)
- expert [´ekspə:t] n.&a.专家；内行 (初中英语单词)
- frighten [´fraitn] vt.吓唬，使惊惧 (初中英语单词)
- ability [ə´biliti] n.(办事)能力；才干 (初中英语单词)
- absolutely [´æbsəlu:tli] ad.绝对地；确实 (初中英语单词)
- essential [i´senʃəl] a.必需的 n.要素，要点 (初中英语单词)
- solely [´səulli] ad.唯一；单独；完全 (高中英语单词)
- inherit [in´herit] v.继承；遗传 (高中英语单词)
- post-office [´pəust-´ɔfis] a.邮政的 (高中英语单词)
- abolition [,æbə´liʃən] n.废除；废止 (高中英语单词)
- fortnight [´fɔ:tnait] n.两星期 (高中英语单词)
- perfection [pə´fekʃən] n.完美；极致；熟练 (高中英语单词)
- fireplace [´faiəpleis] n.壁炉，炉灶 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- strain [strein] vt.拉紧 vi.拖 n.张力 (高中英语单词)
- sewing [´səuiŋ] n.缝纫；(书的)装订 (高中英语单词)
- so-called [´sou ´kɔ:ld] a.所谓的，号称的 (高中英语单词)
- sturdy [´stə:di] a.坚强的；坚定的 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- investigate [in´vestigeit] v.调查(研究) (高中英语单词)
- viewpoint [´vju:pɔint] n.观点，看法 (英语四级单词)
- temporarily [´tempərərili] ad.暂时地 (英语四级单词)
- accomplished [ə´kʌmpliʃt] a.完成了的；熟练的 (英语四级单词)
- partial [´pɑ:ʃəl] a.部分的；偏袒的 (英语四级单词)
- urgent [´ə:dʒənt] a.急迫的，紧急的 (英语四级单词)
- revolve [ri´vɔlv] v.(使)旋转；循环 (英语四级单词)
- invalid [in´vælid] n.病人 a.无效的 (英语四级单词)
- appalling [ə´pɔ:liŋ] a.令人震惊的 (英语四级单词)
- familiarity [fə,mili´æriti] n.熟悉；新近；随便 (英语六级单词)
- calling [´kɔ:liŋ] n.点名；职业；欲望 (英语六级单词)
- housework [´hauswə:k] n.家务劳动 (英语六级单词)
- relentless [ri´lentləs] a.无情的；坚韧的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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