THE CABIN

"There, the last hill is dug, and I'm glad!" and Tom Jones leaned on his hoe, lost in thought.

He was a stout lad of sixteen, with frowzy brown hair, crowned by a brimless straw hat, and his pants looked as if they had been turned inside out and outside in, upside down and downside up, and darned and patched and re-darned and patched again, until time, and labor, and cloth enough, such as it was, had been used to fabricate a number of pairs of pants. As for boots,–for his lower extremities were not wholly destitute of protection,–they might have come down to him as an heir-loom from a pauper of a preceding generation. But what mattered it to him that his clothes were threadbare, many-hued, 10 and grotesque? or that his boots let the deep, rich soil in at sides and toes? Was he not a "squatter sovereign," or the son of one, free in his habits as the Indian that roamed the prairies of his frontier home? He had not heard of "the latest fashion," and paid no attention to the cut of his garments, although, it must be confessed, he sometimes wished them a trifle more spruce and comfortable. His home, as I have hinted, was on the prairie. Nevertheless, the family domain was an unpretending one. Less than an acre, fenced in the rudest manner, enclosed the "farm and farm buildings," the latter consisting of a small log house and log pigsty, the cabin, at the time our sketch opens, being, it is evident, at least two seasons old–a fact which serves to show the more plainly the poverty and thriftlessness of the inmates; for they have had time, certainly, to cultivate quite a tract of the easily-tilled land, had they enterprise and industry. But they belonged to a class not famous for these virtues–the restless, ever-moving class that pioneer the way towards the setting sun. But perhaps we are leaving the boy propped too long on his hoe. Let us take a more critical look at him. "Fine feathers don't make fine birds," observes the old proverb. Forgetting the dress, then, please study his face. A clear, deep-blue eye, delicately-arched eyebrows, regular features, 11 mouth and chin indicating decision and native refinement, and a well-developed forehead. Ah, here may be a diamond in the rough! Who knows?

The squatter's son looked about him with a dissatisfied air. "I do wish," he soliloquized, "that I could see something of the world, and do something for myself. Here we've been changing around from one place to another, doing nothing but raise a few potatoes and a little corn, living in a miserable cabin, where there are no schools, and scarcely any neighbors. It's too bad to spend all our days so. I believe we were made for something better; and, as the minister told us Sunday, we ought to try and be somebody, and not float along as the stick on the stream. I'm sure it isn't, and never was, to mother's mind; and, as to father–" And here he stopped and pondered, as if trying to solve a mystery, and in a style that would have been pronounced philosophic, had he been a college professor–scratched his head. Then, with his ragged sleeve, he wiped the sweat from his brow, leaving a streak of black that made that part of his face present quite a different appearance from what it did, reader, when you and I noticed it a moment ago. And going to the cabin, he returned with a rickety basket, and, commencing at the lower end of the field, began picking up 12 the potatoes that had been left drying in the sun. A goodly crop had the little patch produced; for the vegetable decays and fertilizing rains and snows of centuries had covered the prairie with a dressing with which art could not compete, and it was more difficult not to get a harvest from the seed sown than to get one. The rows of hills were covered with the bountiful returns brought up to the light of day by Tom's well-used hoe. It was not, however, the size, quality, or number of the potatoes that most interested Tom just then. The fact that they were all out of the ground; that the corn was cut and stacked, and the pumpkins ready to be housed; that the fall work could be finished by that afternoon's sun-setting,–stirred him strangely; for he had of late begun to question the future, to learn what it had in store for him. He had come to realize, in a degree, that that future would be very much what he chose to make it. And serious dissatisfaction with the past and the present filled his heart with disquiet.

Tom's memory had been active for a few days. How like yesterday it seemed, when he was a little child, and his father, getting together money enough, bought a horse and wagon, and, putting the family in the vehicle, started out prospecting for a new home farther from the advancing waves of civilization! How many similar expeditions 13 had they taken since, and how painfully had their experiences illustrated the saying, "A rolling stone gathers no moss"! But roll Mr. Jones would. Tom knew this too well. It was, indeed, viewed in one aspect, an easy way to get on, this going in one's own conveyance from place to place of Uncle Sam's unsettled lands; this living off the country, gypsying in the woods and on the prairies; this two thirds savage and one third civilized mode of putting a growing family through the world; and if you were to see Mr. Jones seated in the emigrant wagon, reins in hand and pipe in mouth, or with shouldered rifle on the track of a deer, you would say that such a life was eminently agreeable to him. Every man is made for something; and you would say that he was cut out for a wandering frontier loafer, who gets his subsistence by doing the least possible work in the easiest possible manner, and hunting and fishing. A horse and wagon, or extemporized log cabin, for a shelter; tools enough for the simplest tilling of the soil, and furniture for the rudest housekeeping and clothing; the making over, by the industrious wife, of clothes bought "some time back,"–such was the way the Joneses lived. Putting up a small log house by the bank of a river for the sake of the fish, and near a forest for the game, with "a strip of clean prairie" for "garden sarce,"–there 14 they might remain for a year or two; then you would be quite sure to find the immigrant friend looking discontented, and expressing a wish to "sell his claim."

"It's growing so crowded with folks coming into the country, I can't go three miles without stumbling against a shanty or a house; and cart tracks are getting so plenty, I can't stand it. I must pull up stakes, and go farther on to find a place to breathe in."

And, perchance, realizing a trifle for his claim and improvements, Dobbin is hitched anew into the crazy old wagon. The broken crockery, and leaky black tea-pot, and ancient cooking-stove–the pipe of the latter running up through the wagon-top–are once more aboard, wife and children packed in, and the uneasy frontiersman is pushing out again towards solitude.

Tom had been reviewing this bit of family history more in detail, and much more vividly than we have now done. The result was a feeling of disgust, and a resolution to break away from such a life, and an endeavor for something higher.

But what had brought the squatter's son to such a conclusion? The condition of the family had for some time been unsatisfactory to Tom. Though brought up in this roving, improvident way, his better nature often revolted against it; 15 not, however, so strongly and decisively as now. Still, desires, and even longings, for something better had flitted through his mind, only to make him moody and irritable. Doubtless these aspirations were due, in no small measure, to his mother–a woman much superior to her condition, but who, clinging to her husband with a pure and changeless love, accepted the privations of her lot without a murmur. Taken by her marriage from the comforts and advantages of a good home, she had followed his fortunes "for better or for worse," having much more of the latter, in a worldly point of view, than the former. Not that Mr. Jones was a hard or a dissipated man; but his roving habits, and the deprivations and poverty they endured, had made her days sad and toil-worn.

Tom, in his tastes, was like his mother. But a new event had recently occurred. A godly minister, in search of the lost sheep of the heavenly fold, had made his way into the region, and, the Sabbath previous to the opening of our sketch, had, in earnest, eloquent words, preached the gospel to the settlers. The log cabin, in which the services were held, was only a mile and a half distant, and Tom and his father, with the neighbors generally, attended. How differently the gospel message affects different persons! Some are softened, others are hardened, 16 by it. Some are stirred up to certain duties, while, under the same sermon, others are incited to an entirely different train of thought and course of action. The effect on Tom of the sermons of the preacher was to incite his feelings to revolt against his lot in life, and arouse him to the necessity of a purpose in living. He did not look forward so much to the world to come as to the "to come" of this world. The present in its relations to life here–this was the point with him; and he revolved the subject, viewing it in every possible light, until a decision was reached.

"This preacher," said he, "is from a region of schools and privileges. Why can I not seek such advantages, and be somebody, and accomplish something? Why can I not go to the city to school this winter?" What an idea for him! It almost took his breath to think of it. And, then, how should he get there? Where was the money coming from to support him while studying?

"I must work and earn it," he replied. "I can do anything honest; I can, at least, work for my board."

Tom's mind had suffered from a famine of knowledge. He could read passably well, write a little, was good at reckoning, and the little he knew excited a craving for more. Public addresses had always moved him deeply, and the 17 living truths of the gospel, as presented by the living preacher, had set the mental machinery in motion, until the decision to go from home in search of an education, had been wrought out; and it was this rising purpose that kept him so patiently at his day's task of finishing up the fall work, that he might commence his new career.

"I will finish getting in the crops by dark," said he, as he filled the basket, "and then there will be nothing to keep me at home;" and he was about raising the basket to his shoulder, when he was startled from his reveries by a loud cry of,–

"Tom, Tom! come quick! I've caught a fawn, and he'll get away!" It was twelve-year-old Charley from the hazel bushes that bordered the potato-patch near the woods. Tom ran to assist his brother, but could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw the little fellow had caught the fawn by the tail, and was struggling to hold the agile creature, forgetting how dexterously the deer can use his heels. Scarcely had the elder brother mounted the fence, when, with a smart kick, the fawn sent Charley over on his back, and leaped into the enclosure. At this instant a bevy of flaxen-haired urchins, hatless, bonnetless,–Tom's brothers and sisters,–came whooping from the cabin, and joined the chase. In 18 a moment Tom had forgotten all his gloomy thoughts and high resolves, and was as eager as any of them, as they tried to secure the nimble prize. A lively time it was, too; fear and speed against numbers, noise, and strategy. A good force were the pursuers; the "olive plants" of the Joneses grew very naturally in regular gradations, like the steps of a flight of stairs. Tom, Eliza, Charley, Bob, Sarah, Bill, and Bub, the four-year-old, were all active with hands, legs, and lungs, while the mother stood in the doorway, surveying the scene, with baby in her arms.

"Fix up the fence where the deer jumped in!" cried Tom to Charley; and the latter hastened to repair the breach, for the brush had been broken down at that point.

From corner to corner and side to side bounded the deer, slipping through the fingers of one and another of the youngsters; but they gave him no rest.

"Stop him, 'Lize! Hold him, Bob! Head him off. Say! Get out of the way, Bub! There! why didn't you catch him, Charley? Mother, can't you put down baby, and help us? He'll get away! There! he's going over the fence! No, he isn't!" Amid such vociferations the children rushed on, pell-mell, till out of breath. Luckily, the brush fence was so thick 19 and high, being made of dead trees piled upon each other, that the animal could find no point to push through or scale, especially while kept in "running order" by his pursuers. Although thus imprisoned, he was baffling their efforts, refusing to be captured, when Tom said to the children,–

"We can't catch him this way. But if you will all do as I tell you, I guess we can." The fawn was standing in the further corner of the field, as if waiting to see what they would do next. And Tom, ranging his force in line, himself at the head, gave the word to advance towards the deer.

"Steady, steady," said he, as they neared the animal. They had succeeded in approaching within a few yards, and Tom, with outspread arms and eagle eye, advanced slowly, watching to seize him if he should attempt to spring away, when little Bub, who had been sent into the cabin by Tom, having gone around unobserved on the outside of the garden behind the deer, suddenly ran a sharp stick through the brush into the creature's back, saying,–