g, either;
but, late the next afternoon, he came crawling back, with the meal, and
told them that "he should have been home with it long ago, if that
pesky wheel hadn't come off his wagon, and it hadn't taken such a
powerful long time to blacksmith it on again."

How glad little Mitty was to see that bag of meal! and what a nice time
she had of it that night, sitting on a little cricket before a blazing
hickory fire, and eating the buttered cakes that her mother handed down
to her from the table. Oh, you city children couldn't get up such a
frontier appetite for your fricassees, and mince-pies, if you tried a
lifetime.

"They didn't have any newspapers there."

Ah! there you have me! More especially as I had as lief go without my
breakfast as without my newspaper; but, then, I can tell you, that
there were things all the time happening there on the frontier, that
many a newspaper editor would have given his scissors and easy chair to
have got hold of, for his paper. I'll tell you about some.

One night Mitty lay in her little bed of straw and husks, almost
asleep, when she heard her father at the door, singing out,
"H-a-l-l-o-o! h-a-l-l-o-o!" as loud as ever he could; and then a faint
voice, way off, caught it up, and echoed back, "H-a-l-l-o-o!
h-a-l-l-o-o!" Then Mitty's father lit a great bright torch, and moved
it, flaming, back and forth before the door; and in a little while a
poor, weary, frightened traveler, who had got lost in the dark woods,
heard the voice that had answered to his, and saw, by the torch, where
to come to find Mr. Moore; and in less than an hour after, he was
snoring away under Mr. Moore's roof, with a good, comfortable supper
tucked under his ribs while the bears had to go without any.

_Bears?_ Certainly!--I didn't mention the gentlemen before, for fear it
would make your mother trouble when it came your bed-time; but,
nevertheless, it is a naked fact that _bears_ live on the frontier.

One day a woman came in to Mr. Moore's, crying and "taking on" in a
most pitiful manner. Mitty couldn't understand (the woman sobbed so
much) what it was all about; but she concluded that something _special_
was to pay, because her mother let her brown bread all burn to a crisp
in the oven, while she was listening to her. Then her mother ran out in
the cornfield, with her cap strings all flying, after her father; and
Mr. Moore dropped his hoe, ran to the house and caught up a great tin
horn, and stood at