Roughing It in the Bush Part 15

"Better late than never," thought I, as I emptied the emptyings into my flour. "Tom is not up yet. I will make him so happy with a loaf of new bread, nice home-baked bread, for his breakfast." It was my first Canadian loaf. I felt quite proud of it, as I placed it in the odd machine in which it was to be baked. I did not understand the method of baking in these ovens; or that my bread should have remained in the kettle for half an hour, until it had risen the second time, before I applied the fire to it, in order that the bread should be light. It not only required experience to know when it was in a fit state for baking, but the oven should have been brought to a proper temperature to receive the bread. Ignorant of all this, I put my unrisen bread into a cold kettle, and heaped a large quant.i.ty of hot ashes above and below it. The first intimation I had of the result of my experiment was the disagreeable odour of burning bread filling the house.

"What is this horrid smell?" cried Tom, issuing from his domicile, in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves. "Do open the door, Bell (to the maid); I feel quite sick."

"It is the bread," said I, taking the lid of the oven with the tongs. "Dear me, it is all burnt!"

"And smells as sour as vinegar," says he. "The black bread of Sparta!"

Alas! for my maiden loaf! With a rueful face I placed it on the breakfast table. "I hoped to have given you a treat, but I fear you will find it worse than the cakes in the pan."

"You may be sure of that," said Tom, as he stuck his knife into the loaf, and drew it forth covered with raw dough. "Oh, Mrs. Moodie!

I hope you make better books than bread."

We were all sadly disappointed. The others submitted to my failure good-naturedly, and made it the subject of many droll, but not unkindly, witicisms. For myself, I could have borne the severest infliction from the pen of the most formidable critic with more fort.i.tude than I bore the cutting up of my first loaf of bread.

After breakfast, Moodie and Wilson rode into the town; and when they returned at night brought several long letters for me. Ah! those first kind letters from home! Never shall I forget the rapture with which I grasped them--the eager, trembling haste with which I tore them open, while the blinding tears which filled my eyes hindered me for some minutes from reading a word which they contained. Sixteen years have slowly pa.s.sed away--it appears half a century--but never, never can home letters give me the intense joy those letters did.

After seven years' exile, the hope of return grows feeble, the means are still less in our power, and our friends give up all hope of our return; their letters grow fewer and colder, their expressions of attachment are less vivid; the heart has formed new ties, and the poor emigrant is nearly forgotten. Double those years, and it is as if the grave had closed over you, and the hearts that once knew and loved you know you no more.

Tom, too, had a large packet of letters, which he read with great glee. After re-perusing them, he declared his intention of setting off on his return home the next day. We tried to persuade him to stay until the following spring, and make a fair trial of the country. Arguments were thrown away upon him; the next morning our eccentric friend was ready to start.

"Good-bye!" quoth he, shaking me by the hand as if he meant to sever it from the wrist. "When next we meet it will be in New South Wales, and I hope by that time you will know how to make better bread." And thus ended Tom Wilson's emigration to Canada. He brought out three hundred pounds, British currency; he remained in the country just four months, and returned to England with barely enough to pay his pa.s.sage home.

THE BACKWOODSMAN

Son of the isles! rave not to me Of the old world's pride and luxury; Why did you cross the western deep, Thus like a love-lorn maid to weep O'er comforts gone and pleasures fled, 'Mid forests wild to earn your bread?

Did you expect that Art would vie With Nature here, to please the eye; That stately tower, and fancy cot, Would grace each rude concession lot; That, independent of your hearth, Men would admit your claims to birth?

No tyrant's fetter binds the soul, The mind of man's above control; Necessity, that makes the slave, Has taught the free a course more brave; With bold, determined heart to dare The ills that all are born to share.

Believe me, youth, the truly great Stoop not to mourn o'er fallen state; They make their wants and wishes less, And rise superior to distress; The glebe they break--the sheaf they bind-- But elevates a n.o.ble mind.

Contented in my rugged cot, Your lordly towers I envy not; Though rude our clime and coa.r.s.e our cheer, True independence greets you here; Amid these forests, dark and wild, Dwells honest labour's hardy child.

His happy lot I gladly share, And breathe a purer, freer air; No more by wealthy upstart spurn'd, The bread is sweet by labour earn'd; Indulgent heaven has bless'd the soil, And plenty crowns the woodman's toil.

Beneath his axe, the forest yields Its th.o.r.n.y maze to fertile fields; This goodly breadth of well-till'd land, Well-purchased by his own right hand, With conscience clear, he can bequeath His children, when he sleeps in death.

CHAPTER VII

UNCLE JOE AND HIS FAMILY

"Ay, your rogue is a laughing rogue, and not a whit the less dangerous for the smile on his lip, which comes not from an honest heart, which reflects the light of the soul through the eye. All is hollow and dark within; and the contortion of the lip, like the phosophoric glow upon decayed timber, only serves to point out the rotteness within."

Uncle Joe! I see him now before me, with his jolly red face, twinkling black eyes, and rubicund nose. No thin, weasel-faced Yankee was he, looking as if he had lived upon 'cute ideas and speculations all his life; yet Yankee he was by birth, ay, and in mind, too; for a more knowing fellow at a bargain never crossed the lakes to abuse British inst.i.tutions and locate himself comfortably among despised Britishers. But, then, he had such a good-natured, fat face, such a mischievous, mirth-loving smile, and such a merry, roguish expression in those small, jet-black, glittering eyes, that you suffered yourself to be taken in by him, without offering the least resistance to his impositions.

Uncle Joe's father had been a New England loyalist, and his doubtful attachment to the British government had been repaid by a grant of land in the towns.h.i.+p of H---. He was the first settler in that towns.h.i.+p, and chose his location in a remote spot, for the sake of a beautiful natural spring, which bubbled up in a small stone basin in the green bank at the back of the house.

"Father might have had the pick of the towns.h.i.+p," quoth Uncle Joe; "but the old c.o.o.n preferred that sup of good water to the site of a town. Well, I guess it's seldom I trouble the spring; and whenever I step that way to water the horses, I think what a tarnation fool the old one was, to throw away such a chance of making his fortune, for such cold lap."

"Your father was a temperance man?"

"Temperance!--He had been fond enough of the whiskey bottle in his day. He drank up a good farm in the United States, and then he thought he could not do better than turn loyal, and get one here for nothing. He did not care a cent, not he, for the King of England.

He thought himself as good, any how. But he found that he would have to work hard here to scratch along, and he was mightily plagued with the rheumatics, and some old woman told him that good spring water was the best cure for that; so he chose this poor, light, stony land on account of the spring, and took to hard work and drinking cold water in his old age."

"How did the change agree with him?"

"I guess better than could have been expected. He planted that fine orchard, and cleared his hundred acres, and we got along slick enough as long as the old fellow lived."

"And what happened after his death, that obliged you to part with your land?"

"Bad times--bad crops," said Uncle Joe, lifting his shoulders.

"I had not my father's way of sc.r.a.ping money together. I made some deuced clever speculations, but they all failed. I married young, and got a large family; and the women critters ran up heavy bills at the stores, and the crops did not yield enough to pay them; and from bad we got to worse, and Mr. C--- put in an execution, and seized upon the whole concern. He sold it to your man for double what it cost him; and you got all that my father toiled for during the last twenty years of his life for less than half the cash he laid out upon clearing it."

"And had the whiskey nothing to do with this change?" said I, looking him in the face suspiciously.

"Not a bit! When a man gets into difficulties, it is the only thing to keep him from sinking outright. When your husband has had as many troubles as I have had, he will know how to value the whiskey bottle."

This conversation was interrupted by a queer-looking urchin of five years old, dressed in a long-tailed coat and trousers, popping his black shock head in at the door, and calling out,

"Uncle Joe!--You're wanted to hum."

"Is that your nephew?"

"No! I guess 'tis my woman's eldest son," said Uncle Joe, rising, "but they call me Uncle Joe. 'Tis a spry chap that--as cunning as a fox. I tell you what it is--he will make a smart man. Go home, Ammon, and tell your ma that I am coming."

"I won't," said the boy; "you may go hum and tell her yourself.

She has wanted wood cut this hour, and you'll catch it!"

Away ran the dutiful son, but not before he had applied his forefinger significantly to the side of his nose, and, with a knowing wink, pointed in the direction of home.

Uncle Joe obeyed the signal, drily remarking that he could not leave the barn door without the old hen clucking him back.

At this period we were still living in Old Satan's log house, and anxiously looking out for the first snow to put us in possession of the good substantial log dwelling occupied by Uncle Joe and his family, which consisted of a brown brood of seven girls, and the highly-prized boy who rejoiced in the extraordinary name of Ammon.

Strange names are to be found in this free country. What think you, gentle reader, of Solomon Sly, Reynard Fox, and Hiram Dolittle and Prudence Fidget; all veritable names, and belonging to substantial yeomen? After Ammon and Ichabod, I should not be at all surprised to meet with Judas Iscariot, Pilate, and Herod. And then the female appellations! But the subject is a delicate one and I will forbear to touch upon it. I have enjoyed many a hearty laugh over the strange affectations which people designate here very handsome names. I prefer the old homely Jewish names, such as that which it pleased my G.o.dfather and G.o.dmothers to bestow upon me, to one of those high-sounding christianities, the Minervas, Cinderellas, and Almerias of Canada. The love of singular names is here carried to a marvellous extent. It is only yesterday that, in pa.s.sing through one busy village, I stopped in astonishment before a tombstone headed thus: "Sacred to the memory of Silence Sharman, the beloved wife of Asa Sharman." Was the woman deaf and dumb, or did her friends hope by bestowing upon her such an impossible name to still the voice of Nature, and check, by an admonitory appellative, the active spirit that lives in the tongue of woman? Truly, Asa Sharman, if thy wife was silent by name as well as by nature, thou wert a fortunate man!

But to return to Uncle Joe. He made many fair promises of leaving the residence we had bought, the moment he had sold his crops and could remove his family. We could see no interest which could be served by his deceiving us, and therefore we believed him, striving to make ourselves as comfortable as we could in the meantime in our present wretched abode. But matters are never so bad but that they may be worse. One day when we were at dinner, a waggon drove up to the door, and Mr. --- alighted, accompanied by a fine-looking, middle-aged man, who proved to be Captain S---, who had just arrived from Demarara with his wife and family. Mr. ---, who had purchased the farm of Old Satan, had brought Captain S--- over to inspect the land, as he wished to buy a farm, and settle in that neighbourhood.

With some difficulty I contrived to accommodate the visitors with seats, and provide them with a tolerable dinner. Fortunately, Moodie had brought in a brace of fine fat partridges that morning; these the servant transferred to a pot of boiling water, in which she immersed them for the s.p.a.ce of a minute--a novel but very expeditious way of removing the feathers, which then come off at the least touch. In less than ten minutes they were stuffed, trussed, and in the bake-kettle; and before the gentlemen returned from walking over the farm, the dinner was on the table.

To our utter consternation, Captain S--- agreed to purchase, and asked if we could give him possession in a week!