unpretending one. Less than an acre, fenced in the rudest
manner, enclosed the "farm and farm buildings," the latter consisting
of a small log house and log pigsty, the cabin, at the time our sketch
opens, being, it is evident, at least two seasons old--a fact which
serves to show the more plainly the poverty and thriftlessness of the
inmates; for they have had time, certainly, to cultivate quite a tract
of the easily-tilled land, had they enterprise and industry. But they
belonged to a class not famous for these virtues--the restless,
ever-moving class that pioneer the way towards the setting sun. But
perhaps we are leaving the boy propped too long on his hoe. Let us
take a more critical look at him. "Fine feathers don't make fine
birds," observes the old proverb. Forgetting the dress, then, please
study his face. A clear, deep-blue eye, delicately-arched eyebrows,
regular features, mouth and chin indicating decision and native
refinement, and a well-developed forehead. Ah, here may be a diamond
in the rough! Who knows?

The squatter's son looked about him with a dissatisfied air. "I do
wish," he soliloquized, "that I could see something of the world, and
do something for myself. Here we've been changing around from one
place to another, doing nothing but raise a few potatoes and a little
corn, living in a miserable cabin, where there are no schools, and
scarcely any neighbors. It's too bad to spend all our days so. I
believe we were made for something better; and, as the minister told
us Sunday, we ought to try and be somebody, and not float along as the
stick on the stream. I'm sure it isn't, and never was, to mother's
mind; and, as to father--" And here he stopped and pondered, as if
trying to solve a mystery, and in a style that would have been
pronounced philosophic, had he been a college professor--scratched his
head. Then, with his ragged sleeve, he wiped the sweat from his brow,
leaving a streak of black that made that part of his face present
quite a different appearance from what it did, reader, when you and I
noticed it a moment ago. And going to the cabin, he returned with a
rickety basket, and, commencing at the lower end of the field, began
picking up the potatoes that had been left drying in the sun. A
goodly crop had the little patch produced; for the vegetable decays
and fertilizing rains and snows of centuries had covered the prairie
with a dressing with which art could not compete, and it was more