ded to; and the savory fumes of venison, of the
prairie hen and other good things went far to prove that even backwoods
life was not without its comforts. [Footnote: The author has often heard
his mother say that the most enjoyable period of her life was in a
pioneer home similar to the above.]

In a few months, the retired cabin, once so solitary, became the nucleus
of a little settlement. Other sections and quarter sections of land were
entered at the land office by new corners. New portions of ground were
cleared, cabins were erected; and in a short time the settlement could
turn out a dozen efficient hands for house raising or log rolling. A saw
mill soon after was erected at the falls of the creek; the log huts
received a poplar weather boarding, and, as the little settlement
increased, other improvements appeared; a mail line was established, and
before many years elapsed, a fine road was completed to the nearest
town, and a stage coach, which ran once, then twice a week, connected
the settlement with the populous country to the east of it.

This was the life the hero of this story began. It might be said to be
an unromantic life; yet such a life was known to many of our American
ancestors. It had its pleasures as well as its pains. It had its poetry
as well as its prose, and its joys as well as its sorrows. The vastness
of the forest and depths of the solitude by which he was surrounded,
made its impress on his mind. He grew up in ignorance of tyranny and
many of the evils of the great cities.

The cabin home and the narrow clearing about it formed his playground.
His first toy was a half-bushel measure, which he called his "bushee!"
This he rolled before him around the log cabin and the paths made in the
tall grass, frequently to the dread of his mother, who feared that he
might encounter some of the deadly serpents with which the forest
abounded. He remembered on one occasion, when his mother found him going
too far, she called:

"Come back, Fernando; mother is afraid you will step on a snake."

He looked about him with the confidence of childhood, and answered:

"No 'nakes here."

Just at that moment, the mother, to her horror, saw a deadly reptile
coiled in the very path along which the child was rolling his "bushee,"
and with true frontier woman's pluck, ran and snatched up the
bare-footed Fernando, when only within two feet of the deadly serpent,
carried him to the house, and with the stout staff ass