of a wild and
run-away turn, and, hence, well fitted to figure as a warning example to
all dissatisfied youngsters, who not content to stay at home and do
their sliding on dry ground, go seeking for ice on a summer day at
imminent risk of getting drowned.

Now green Kentucky, in the days of Sprigg, was _green_ Kentucky, indeed!
Mrs. Daniel Boone and her daughters had not yet distinguished themselves
by being the first white women who ever set foot upon the banks of the
Kentucky River, when Sprigg was already a three-years' child, the joy
and pride of a home in a hewn log house in western Virginia; as merry
and saucy, and every whit as well pleased with himself as were he the
rising hope and promise of one of the "F. F. Vs." The eight or nine
years of pioneer activity which had followed the historical event just
noticed, had made many a wide gap in the forest, yet had not changed the
general aspect of the country so much but that the fields, as viewed by
the eagle who sailed with the clouds, must have appeared no more than as
the prints of man's feet, left impressed in the otherwise universal
verdure. As you may well imagine, so wild and savage a region must still
have been the home of a thousand wild and savage creatures, the like
whereof we never dream of now-a-days, even in our loneliest woodland
rambles. There, too, was the terrible red man, who, though he built not
his wigwam in these wilds, made it his frequent custom of resorting
thither, sometimes to follow the chase, but oftener to war with the
whites, who lived in great terror of him the whole year round.

The Christian name of our hero's father, whom he called "Pap," was
Jervis; the Christian name of his mother, whom he called "Mam," was
Elster, and the surname was Whitney. They dwelt in a roomy cabin, rudely
built of logs and boards, with a clay-topped chimney at each end, and a
porch or shed on each side. Under the front porch Jervis hung his
saddle, fishing tackle, beaver traps and the like. Under the back porch
Elster kept her spinning wheel, crockeryware, garden seed, a big cedar
water bucket, with its crooked-handle gourd, and the like; while in
there, on the earthen floor of the kitchen, stood her huge, unwieldly
loom. The cabin was situated in the midst of a small patch of cultivated
ground, hemmed in on every side by dense and lofty woods, which spread
their waving shadows for miles and miles away to the north and south, to
the east and west, with on