ream in one of the flat-boats
that supply the primitive necessities of the small farmers who dwell on
the banks of the Big Sandy, in that debatable border-land which lies
between Kentucky and Virginia; or let him, if he have a taste for
adventure, hire his horse at Catlettsburg, at the mouth of the river,
and lose his way among the blind bridle-paths that lead to Louisa and to
Prestonburg. If he stops to ask a night's lodging at one of the
farm-houses that are to be found at the junction of the creeks with the
rivers, log-houses with their primitive out-buildings, their
half-constructed rafts of lumber ready to float down-stream with the
next rise, their 'dug-outs' for the necessities of river-intercourse,
and their rough oxcarts for hauling to and from the mill, he will see
before him such a home as that in which I passed the first twenty years
of my life.

I had little claim on the farmer with whom I lived. I was the child by a
former marriage of his wife, who had brought me with her into this
wilderness, a puny, ailing creature of four years, and into the three
years that followed was compressed all the happiness I could remember.
The free life in the open air, the nourishing influence of the rich
natural scenery by which I was surrounded, the grand, silent trees with
their luxuriant foliage, the fresh, strong growth of the vegetation, all
seemed to breathe health into my frame, and with health came the
capacity for enjoyment. I was happy in the mere gift of existence, happy
in the fulness of content, with no playmate but the kindly and lovely
mother Earth from whose bosom I drew fulness of life.

But in my seventh year my mother died, worn out by the endless,
unvarying round of labors which break down the constitutions of our
small farmers' wives. She grew sallow and thin under repeated attacks of
chills and fever, brought into the world, one after another, three puny
infants, only to lay them away from her breast, side by side, under the
sycamore that overshadowed our cornfield, and visibly wasted away,
growing more and more feeble, until, one winter morning, we laid her,
too, at rest by her babies. Before the year was out, my father (so I
called him) was married again.

My step-mother was a good woman, and meant to do her duty by me. Nay,
she was more than that: she was, as far as her poor light went, a
Christian. She had experienced religion in the great revival of 18--,
which was felt all through Western Kent