nger, "not a bit of it. If
a youngster gits orphaned or laid up she just says 'Pork's plenty, send
'em to me.' An' I generally do. Other folks do, too, an' quite a few o'
them hev been brought her by the 'little white lady' you've been hearing
about. She's fonder o' children than any woman I ever saw, is Susan. But
she won't talk kids, she'll only talk hogs."

"That's pretty fine work, I think," said the boy. "But I should imagine
the youngsters wouldn't have much of a chance. It isn't any better than
a backwoods life, away out there."

The old Ranger, usually so slow and deliberate in his movements, turned
on him like a flash.

"The meanest thing in this world," he said, "is not bein' able to see or
willin' to see what some one else has done for you. There ain't a home
in all these here United States that don't owe its happiness to the
backwoodsman. You can't make a country civilized by sittin' in an office
an' writin' the word 'civilized' on the map. Some one has got to get out
an' do it, an' keep on doin' it till it's done. It was the man who had
nothin' in the world but a wife, a rifle, an' an ax who made America."

"I had forgotten for the moment," said the boy, a little taken off his
feet by the sudden energy and the flashing speech of the usually
impassive mountaineer.

"So does mighty near every one else 'forget for the moment.' But if the
backwoodsman forgot for the moment he was likely to be missin' his
scalp-lock, or if he tried to take a holiday it meant his family would
go hungry. He never forgot his children or his children's children, but
they're none too fond o' rememberin' him.

"Everythin' you have now, he first showed you how. If he wanted a house,
he had to build it; if he wanted bread, he had to raise the grain,
grind, an' bake it; if he wanted clothin', he had to get skins, cure,
an' sew 'em. But he never had to hunt for honor an' for courage; he
brought those with him; an' he didn't have to get any book-larnin' to
teach him how to make his cabin a home, an' his wife an' his children
were allers joys to him, not cares. They were men! An' what do you
reckon made 'em men?"

"The hardships of the life, I suppose," hazarded Wilbur.

"Not a bit of it; it was the forest. The forest was their nurse in
infancy, their playmate when they were barefooted kids runnin' around
under the trees, their work by day, an' their home when it was dark.
They lived right down with Nature, an' they larned that if