3 Nex Set Ding in a boy to see a great natural object which is I am sovet in his school books; nor is it an uninPerla operisano de la vre where he can see it frequent *** $ she wasry år a dor to grow up in, whether his entre as rari, & pure or artistic, or poetical. Der nang ni agar be on the land. Fish were SH D Istress Game abounded in the woods. **** any way y be had for the search after à Le sunan ing sey is schlime, and what is Love Isa Champlain is a stage on WAT DAE rare, and Eving upon its shores vrin viini he was destined to AAR veries te ronid work in it to Fessel the next five years of ay his mind was far in best vindt he has since done g a mutant period of his TEL Zweg, & Zey sy in the country, * TAS WIT a various kinds. arves, or renare the ground as meina employspurning the trees se sheer and catmesant labor ess messinte point, be $ gathered together the light wood into heaps. And when the great logs had to be rolled upon one another, there was scope for the combined skill and strength of the whole party. Many happy and merry days the family spent together in this employment. The mother's spirit never flagged. Her voice rose in song and laughter from the tangled brush-wood in which she was often buried; and no word, discordant or unkind, was ever known to break the perfect harmony, to interrupt the perfect good humor that prevailed in the family. At night, they went home to the most primitive of suppers, and partook of it in the picturesque and labor-saving style in which the dinner before alluded to was consumed. The neighbors still point out a tract of fifty acres which was cleared in this sportive and Swiss-Family-Robinson-like manner. They show the spring on the side of the road where the family used to stop and drink on their way; and they show a hemlock-tree, growing from the rocks above the spring, which used to furnish the brooms, weekly renewed, which swept the little house in which the little family lived. To complete the picture, imagine them all clad in the same material, the coarsest kind of linen or linsey-woolsey, home-spun, dyed with butternut bark, and the different garments made in the roughest and simplest manner by the mother. More than three garments at the same time, Horace seldom wore in the summer, and these were—a straw hat, generally in a state of dilapidation, a tow-shirt, never buttoned, a pair of trousers made of the family material, and having the peculiarity of being very short in both legs, but shorter in one than the other. In the winter he added a pair of shoes au a jacket. During the five years of his life at Westhaven, probably is clothes did not cost three dollars a year; and, I believe, that during the whole period of his childhood, up to the time when he came of age, not fifty dollars in all were expended upon his dress. He never nanifested, on any occasion, in any company, nor at any part of his ea 'v life, the slightest interest in his attire, nor the least care for its effect upon others. That amiable trait in human nature which inches us to decoration, which make us desirous to present an agable figure to others, ard to abhor peculiarity in our appearance, is a trait which Horace never gave the smallest evidence of possessing. Nor is it a slight thing for a boy to see a great natural object which At Westhaven, Mr. Greeley, as they say in the country, 'took jobs;' and the jobs which he took were of various kinds. He would contract to get in a harvest, to prepare the ground for a new one, to 'tend' a saw-mill; but his principal employment was clearing up land; that is, piling up and burning the trees after they had been felled. After a time he kept sheep and cattle. In most of his undertakings he prospered. By incessant labor and by reducing his expenditures to the lowest possible point, he saved money, slowly but continuously. In whatever he engaged, whether it was haying, harvesting, sawing, or land-clearing, he was assisted by all his family. There was little work to do at home, and after breakfast, the house was left to take care of itself, and away went the family, father, mother, boys, girls, and oxen, to work together. Clearing land offers an excellent field for family labor, as it affords work adapted to all degrees of strength. The father chopped the larger logs, and directed the labor of all the company. Horace drove the oxen, and drove them none too well, say the neighbors, and was gradually supplanted in the office of driver by his younger brother. Both the boys could chop the smaller trees. Their mother and sisters gathered together the light wood into heaps. And when the great logs had to be rolled upon one another, there was scope for the combined skill and strength of the whole party. Many happy and merry days the family spent together in this employment. The mother's spirit never flagged. Her voice rose in song and laughter from the tangled brush-wood in which she was often buried; and no word, discordant or unkind, was ever known to break the perfect harmony, to interrupt the perfect good humor that prevailed in the family. At night, they went home to the most primitive of suppers, and partook of it in the picturesque and labor-saving style in which the dinner before alluded to was consumed. The neighbors still point out a tract of fifty acres which was cleared in this sportive and Swiss-Family-Robinson-like manner. They show the spring on the side of the road where the family used to stop and drink on their way; and they show a hemlock-tree, growing from the rocks above the spring, which used to furnish the brooms, weekly renewed, which swept the little house in which the little family lived. To complete the picture, imagine them all clad in the same material, the coarsest kind of linen or linsey-woolsey, home-spun, dyed with butternut bark, and the different garments made in the roughest and simplest manner by the mother. More than three garments at the same time, Horace seldom wore in the summer, and these were-a straw hat, generally in a state of dilapidation, a tow-shirt, never buttoned, a pair of trousers made of the family material, and having the peculiarity of being very short in both legs, but shorter in one than the other. In the winter he added a pair of shoes au a jacket. During the five years of his life at Westhaven, probably is clothes did not cost three dollars a year; and, I believe, that durn the whole period of his childhood, up to the time when he came of age, not fifty dollars in all were expended upon his dress. He never nanifested, on any occasion, in any company, nor at any part of his ea 'v life, the slightest interest in his attire, nor the least care for its effect upon others. That amiable trait in human nature which inclines us to decoration, which make us desirous to present an ageable figure to others, ard to abhor peculiarity in our appearance, is a trait which Horace never gave the smallest evidence of possessing. arrived lingered a few years on the edge-was pushed in--and scrambled out on the other side. It was on a Monday morning. There had been a long, fierce rain, and the clouds still hung heavy and dark over the hills. Horace, then only nine years old, on coming down stairs in the morning, saw several men about the house; neighbors, some of them; others were strangers; others he had seen in the village. He was too young to know the nature of an Execution, and by what right the sheriff and a party of men laid hands upon his father's property. His father had walked quietly off into the woods; for, at that period, a man's person was not exempt from seizure. Horace had a vague idea that the men had come to rob them of all they possessed; and wild stories are afloat in the neighborhood, of the boy's conduct on the occasion. Some say, that he seized a hatchet, ran to the neighboring field, and began furiously to cut down a favorite pear-tree, saying, "They shall not have that, anyhow." But his mother called him off, and the pear-tree still stands. Another story is, that he went to one of his mother's closets, and taking as many of her dresses as he could grasp in his arms, ran away with them into the woods, hid them behind a rock, and then came back to the house for more. Others assert, that the article carried off by the indignant boy was not dresses, but a gallon of rum. But whatever the boy did, or left undone, the reader may imagine that it was to all the family a day of confusion, anguish, and horror. Both of Horace's parents were persons of incorruptible honesty; they had striven hard to place such a calamity as this far from their house they had never experienced themselves, nor witnessed at their carlier homes, a similar scene; the blow was unexpected; and mingled with their sense of shame at being publicly degraded, was a feeling of honest rage at the supposed injustice of so summary a ́proceeding. It was a dark day; but it passed, as the darkest day will. An "arrangement" was made with the creditors. Mr. Greeley gave up his own farm, temporarily, and removed to another in the adjoining town of Bedford, which he cultivated on shares, and devoted principally to the raising of hops. Misfortune still pursued him. His two years' experience of hop-growing was not satisfactory. The hop-market was depressed. His own farm in Amherst |