a dense forest of tall
trees and thick underbrush and a fast falling shower of snow (at the
time) added to the gloominess of the scene. I gazed around me with
sadness, almost with dismay and terror. At length I found voice to say
'_can_ we live _here_.' 'I have no doubt that we can live here, and be
happy too,' replied your grandfather in a hopeful voice, 'if it pleases
God to grant us health and strength to meet and, I trust, overcome, the
difficulties and hardships which are the inevitable lot of the early
settlers in a new country.' A man whom Mr. Adams had hired had gone
before us that we might not find a fireless hearth upon our arrival; and
the next day, after having become somewhat rested from the fatigues of
our toilsome journey, and having arranged our small quantity of
furniture with some attempt at order, I began to feel something akin to
interest in our new home; but, to a person brought up as I had been, it
was certainly a gloomy-looking spot; and I must own that I shed some
tears for the home I had left. We were three miles from any neighbour,
and in the absence of my husband I felt a childish fear of being left
alone in that strange wild looking place. Time would fail me to tell you
of all the hardships and privations we endured during the first years of
our residence in this our new home. Lucinda there was our first child. I
buried a little boy younger than Nathan. A few kind settlers gathered
together and laid him in his grave without a minister to perform the
rites of burial. I buried another son and daughter, and all that's left
to me now are Lucinda and Nathan, and your mother, who was my youngest
child; as my children grew older I learned the value of the tolerable
education I had myself received. For many years such a thing as a school
was out of the question, and all the leisure time I could command I
spent in teaching my children. Nathan was slow at learning, but it did
beat all, how smart Lucinda was at her book. I could never tell how she
learned her letters; I may say she picked them up herself, and with a
very little assistance was soon able to read. Other settlers came among
us from time to time, and bye-and-bye we had both a school and a
meeting-house. I tell you, Walter, when I now sit at the door, and look
around me over the beautiful farms, with their orchards and smooth
meadow-lands, and further away the gleaming spire of the village church,
and hear the sharp shriek of the locomotive (I