If the Scottish bard found it a hard experience that

in staid old Scotland, how would he have sung if his lot had been cast amid the vicissitudes of frontier life on an American prairie?

We speak of the uncertainties of all earthly expectations where society organized, helps man in a thousand ways to achieve his plans; but there is nothing settled in a new country: everything is in embryo, and therefore disappointments are indefinitely multiplied. When the immigrant arrives at his destination, he soon finds that his most reasonable projects prove to be the veriest air-castles, and that his reliance must be on Providence and his own strong arm. This state of things is specially trying to the man of small means and unaccustomed to physical toil, as was the case with Mr. Payson. The settlers, especially those of religious character, had made, 127 in true western style, many and generous promises to induce him to live among them. They designed to keep their engagements with him; but a thousand contingencies were continually arising, which they could not foresee, to render the fulfilment of their agreements impossible. But perhaps no failure in this direction had tried the missionary so much as that connected with the erection of a dwelling-house. Mr. Palmer had voluntarily made him the offer of money for that purpose, and if any man could be depended upon, it was he; but he had invested his funds in the new town. He was a prudent man, and when the proposal was made him by the two proprietors to join them in the enterprise, he was disinclined to do so. They were irreligious men, stirring, energetic workers, but devoid of interest in “things unseen,” and therefore could not be expected to care for the present and future moral condition of the settlement. Yet we should do them the justice to say that they were not indifferent to the religious welfare of their village, only that, not being religious men, they would not take the matter in charge themselves; they needed a leader, both to plan and to set a wholesome example, and this was one reason for their asking Mr. Palmer to become a partner. This reason was a weighty one with him; but before deciding the question, he consulted with Mr. Payson. 128

Laying the whole matter before him, he asked,–

“What do you think of my engaging in this thing?”

“I do hope,” he answered, “that, if you can make it pecuniarily successful, you will become a town owner. I should feel that I had a pillar to lean upon in all my endeavors for the social and religious good of this people, and it seems to me that there can be no risk in it; we have everything here to make a town,–water-power, timber, limestone quarries for building material, abundance of clean prairie land for agricultural purposes, and sooner or later a railroad must pass very near here, as it is on the great travelled route to the important points west and north. Emigration is coming in well; we have a religious meeting established, and I hope soon we shall have a school.”

“That is the way it seems to me,” said Mr. Palmer; “and it appears also, that I might do a great deal of good by using aright the power a town owner might have.”

So he decided to make the investment. But mishap after mishap occurred to thwart the enterprises of the town owners; and while their expenses were large, the returns were so small that Mr. Palmer came to the preacher one day, and with emotion said,– 129

“Mr. Payson, I fear I shall have to disappoint you about the money I promised to let you have for the building of your cottage.”

This was a heavy blow to the missionary, and his friend knew too well that it would be, for Mr. Payson had set his heart on having a comfortable home provided for his family when they should arrive. Many a pleasant bit of correspondence had passed between himself and wife on the subject of the pretty white cottage, on the eighty-acre lot adjoining the town, and the joy of meeting her was overshadowed by the thought that she had come to a homeless wilderness, while expecting something so different; and when she asked repeatedly if the cottage was ready, and when he was going to take her to see it, in his unhappiness he avoided a direct reply, which, with the ominous silence of the good friends by whom they were entertained, led her to conjecture how matters stood; and one day she lifted the weight in a measure from his heart by saying,–

“It would be very strange, while almost everybody in a new country are obliged to live in log cabins, if we should be enough better off to put up a framed house. I don’t believe you have been able to yet; it is too much to expect. But never mind; if others can live within log walls for the sake of making money, we certainly can for a higher motive.” 130

“Just like yourself,” said he, gratefully, relating the facts as we have recited them.

“But what are we going to do?” she inquired; “we ought not to think of accepting the hospitality of this generous-hearted family much longer. Their house is already so crowded, it puts them to great inconvenience.”

“I am aware of it,” said her husband. “Mr. Palmer has a little cabin which he has offered me for temporary use until I can put up something on my claim; but it is so rough and lonely, that on your account I have not felt like saying anything to you about it.”

“O,” said she, merrily, “do take me there to-day; it would be so romantic to live in a log cabin.”

So, their host’s team being chartered, they went to look at the “rent.” It was a funny wee loggery, hastily put up for pre-emption purpose, standing in a small, enclosed field near the river, two miles from town, the nearest neighbor being Mr. Jones, who lived a mile and a half farther down the stream.

Mr. Palmer, in anticipation of the visit, had been there before them, and put in a whole glass window, laid the rough boards, that constituted the floor, more closely, and put up some shelves for a cupboard in a corner.

“This is elegance itself!” exclaimed the little 131 woman, laughing heartily: “get a few chairs, and a stove, husband, and we’ll move right in; and see,” she added, looking out of the door; “there are potatoes here that have not been dug–quite a crop: perhaps you can buy the right to use them.”

“O, yes,” replied her husband; “brother Palmer says we can have the use of the cabin free, and all there is about it.”

“The fish in the river, too, I suppose,” said she, stepping to the fence, and peering over the river brink.

“I reckon you won’t get fish enough to get sick on them,” said a voice near; and, Mr. Jones emerged from a clump of bushes, his gun on his shoulder.

“This is our neighbor,” said the minister; “my wife, Mr. Jones.”

“Looking up a cage to put your bird in?” asked the squatter.

The minister replied affirmatively.

“You found that eighty-acre lot just as I told ye–didn’t ye?” he asked.

“Precisely.”

“And did your ‘brother Smith’ give it up like a Christian?” he pursued.

“I suppose I am the proprietor of it now,” said the minister, good-naturedly. 132

“And he didn’t charge you anything for giving up what was not his–did he?”

“No,” said the missionary; “he did not charge me anything for the claim, although he seemed to think it right that I should give him something for the improvements.”

“Improvements! Yes, I suppose he expects some pay for the saw logs he stole from the lot, while he had acres on acres of timber of his own. It’s no more’n fair that a Christian man should be paid for the lumber he plunders from other folks’ land. You paid him for that, of course?”

“O, no,” replied Mr. Payson; “he didn’t bring in his bill for that. He had cleared and fenced the ten-acre piece over the river, and he said he didn’t wish to lose his labor.”

“Well,” said Mr. Jones, almost fiercely, “I wasn’t aware, elder, that you employed him to do that little job; I thought that was done last year, ’fore we knew anything ’bout you in these parts.”

“Yes, yes,” said the missionary, coloring.

“And I rather think,” he continued, “that he got his pay for his work, as he expected to, in what he took from the land. I never saw better corn and wheat, let alone the potatoes and the pumpkins that he raised on that river bottom; and as to the rails, they belong where he took them from, that eighty-acre lot that he robbed and impoverished, 133 tilling the soil in the summer, and cutting down the best trees in the winter, and working what he didn’t care about into rails; and now he turns around,–after having skimmed your milk, when he had plenty of his own,–and tells you, as a Christian brother, that you orter pay him for taking off the cream, and making butter of it for his own table. May I ask what he charged you for the operation?”

“He asked,” said the minister, “eighty dollars, but concluded to take thirty.”

“And when you form your church you’ll choose him first deacon–won’t you?” said the squatter, sneeringly.

“Neighbor Jones,” said the minister, quietly, “I find that Mr. Smith’s character is pretty well understood among the settlers. From all I can learn, I judge that he has never been a member of a church, but is one of a too large class, who try to palm themselves off on religious people, that they may the better carry out their own wicked and selfish ends. I did not pay him the thirty dollars because he had a right to ask it of me, but because I had rather sacrifice something than to expose the spiritual welfare of this people by giving an occasion for a quarrel, however unjustly; and, mark me, the time will come when that money, small as the amount is, will be a burden to the conscience of that man. But,” he 134 added, suddenly changing the subject, “we expect to have a raising on my lot day after to-morrow. Cannot I rely on you for a lift?”

“Ah,” said he, “what are you going to put up there–a framed house?”

“O, no,” replied the minister, smiling, “only a few logs. The town owners are going to let me take down the log house they have used on the other side of the river,–as the logs are so well seasoned,–and put them up on my place; and, wife,”–turning to her,–“we shall have to depend on you for refreshments for the occasion.”

“You have given me short notice,” she replied, “but I can have things ready if you can manage to get supplies, and a stove up in season.”

“If you want a little help in getting started here,” said Mr. Jones, “I’ll send up my Tom; I guess he’d like to lend you a hand.”

“Could he come to-day?” asked Mrs. Payson.

“I’ll send him right along,” said the squatter, as he bent his steps towards home.

“What are we going to do for a stove?” asked the wife, as soon as he was out of sight.

“That’ll be forthcoming,” said the minister.

Tom, having made his appearance, was requested by Mr. Payson to take the team and go to town, and say to Mr. Palmer that they had decided to move into the cabin, and would like to get settled before night; which message brought 135 Mr. Palmer back with Tom, accompanied by a wagon-load, containing a large cooking-stove, a bag of flour, some chairs, a little crockery, and a supply of various eatables. And by nightfall the missionary family were domiciled in the frontier cabin; and the next morning you would have thought the missionary’s wife already quite ‘westernized,’ with her neat calico and tidy apron, busy in her preparations for the house-raising.

“I don’t mean to stay in a borrowed house a great while,” she said. “Husband, how soon do you calculate that we can be housekeeping in our own cabin?”

“It will take some weeks, do our best,” he answered.

“Well,” she rejoined, “I’ll set the time four weeks from to-day; and if it isn’t ready then, I shall go into it if I have to leave you behind.”

But how slowly everything dragged, except the raising! The settlers went into that with right good will; men and teams were busy drawing the logs, while experienced hands placed them properly upon each other, till the ridge-pole crowned the whole. Then they sat down on the grass to partake of the tempting eatables that Tom and Mr. Payson had brought on the ground. There were the light biscuits and the golden butter, nice venison steaks for which they were indebted to the rifle of Mr. Jones, dried apple 136 turnovers, and the sheets of crisp gingerbread, loaf cake, and fragrant coffee.

“We don’t get any whiskey at this raising!” said Mr. Palmer, nudging his next neighbor.

“No,” he replied; “and it’s an example that I hope will be often followed.”

Then there was the door to be made and hung, and the windows to be put in, and the crevices between the logs to be mortared, and the floors laid–long and tedious operations, where everybody was over-busy, and labor could be hired neither “for love nor money.” Mr. Payson found that much of the work had to be done by himself, with the occasional help of Tom. He was city-bred, and his bodily strength feeble; but necessity obliged him to perform prodigies of teaming, lifting, and joinering, and even of quarrying stone for the well that was being dug. A few weeks had wrought a wonderful change in the man of books; his study was wherever he chanced to be; his white hands had become horny and browned, his pale face tanned. His retiring habits had given place to a broad sociality, his diffidence to a generous self-reliance, and it seemed to him that he could do and dare almost anything. From early morning till late at night he worked to get his log home ready, while his wife and little ones remained in the solitary cabin by the riverside. It was a long walk for him, however after 137 toiling all day; and when the sky was overcast at nightfall, he was in danger of getting lost. This gave his wife much uneasiness; then she feared that he might meet some prowling wolf, or other beast, in the darkness; and when he was very late, she would be sure to think he was lost, and would ring her house-bell, which consisted of a tin pan, on which she would drum vigorously with the stove-lifter. She said he would recognize that sound, she thought, at a great distance.

But the four weeks went by, and on account of the difficulty of getting lumber, and other necessary articles, the roof was still unshingled, and the floor only half laid. The wife, like most women, had a very good memory for dates. The log cabin they occupied was open, and the prairie winds cold and piercing, and for a few days she had been quite ill; but that morning, after her unsuspicious husband had left for his joinering, Tom might have been seen guiding a yoke of cattle, attached to a cart, into the enclosure, which, after much “geeing” and “gee-hawing,” he managed to make stand before the door.

“Charlie,” said he, as that urchin made his appearance from the inside of the cart, “you stand by the cattle while I put the things aboard.”

And bringing out a barrel filled with crockery and other things, which Mrs. Payson had clandestinely packed for the occasion, and the wash-boiler 138 full of eatables, and hanging the chairs over the cart stakes, he took down the bedsteads, and placed them in a manner that was highly satisfactory to the energetic minister’s wife, and tying up the bed-clothes in great bundles, deposited them also; and saying to Mrs. Payson, “I shall have to fix an easy place for you to ride, as you’ve been sick,” he laid the hard beds in the empty space which he had left for that purpose in the cart, with the feather beds above, saying,–

“There, you won’t feel the motion much now;” and assisting her to mount, she was enthroned on her downy seat on the top of the load, with the children in high glee by her side.

The steers, which were notoriously unruly, as if aware that they had a minister’s wife aboard, behaved with becoming decorum under Tom’s wise supervision.

Now, it chanced that some careless hunter, firing into the dry prairie grass on the other side of the town, had started a fire. Mrs. Payson had noticed in the morning that there was a smell of burning in the air, and a hazy appearance, but had attached no particular importance to it; but as they approached the town, a scene of great magnificence burst upon her. The fires, driven with velocity before the wind, had swept over the prairies, and reached the belt of woods, in a portion 139 of which were the eighty acres that her husband was at work upon. The flames were crackling and roaring in the forests, burning up the dry underbrush, shooting to the tops of the old dead pines, so that the scene being constantly on her left, was more or less in view for most of the distance.

“What shall we do?” asked Tom, in alarm. “Hadn’t we better go back?”

“Do you think the fire has reached my husband’s claim?” she answered.

Tom scanned the appearance of the smoke with a practised eye, and at length replied,–

“No; it’s not got as far as there yet.”

“Do you think it will?” she inquired, anxiously.

“If the wind does not change, it must before a great while,” he said, “although it will have to cross the road, which will backen it some.”

“Would it burn up the cabin, then?” she inquired.

“I am afraid it would,” he answered.

“Well,” said she, firmly, “I said I would go into that cabin in four weeks, and if it’s not burnt down, I shall keep my word. At any rate we shall be in season to see the fire!” Then she added, looking grave, “I do hope, if it is the Lord’s will, that the fire will be checked in time, my husband has toiled so hard.”

As the cart turned up the main street of the 140 town, she caught sight of the cabin that was to be her future home, and she saw her husband, too, at the same moment, for there he sat on the roof, gazing at the fire, which seemed to be dying out. He heard the rumbling of the wheels as they drew near, and as he caught sight of the picturesque-looking object approaching, he called out,–

“Why, what under the canopy have we here? Wife, and babies, and household effects! What does this mean? You are not going to emigrate farther west–are you?”

“If you’ll descend from your elevated position,” she replied, cheerily, “I’ll condescend to inform you. Now,” she added, “you know I told you, husband, I should move into the cabin to-day; and did you ever know me to break my word?”

“But,” said he, looking disconcerted, “I’m not ready for you yet; the floor isn’t half laid.”

“Well,” she replied, “I can’t stand it to have you sweating up here all alone at your task, running the risk of being devoured by the wolves, or losing your way at night because you think the cabin isn’t comfortable enough for me. Why, you are as particular about having everything done just so about this cabin, as you used to be, east, in having every word exactly in its place when you wrote your sermons. Please, now, just help Tom unload, and set these things in, and I’ll have tea 141 ready directly, and we’ll be where we can cheer you a bit. But what about this fire?”

“Our cabin has had a very narrow escape.”

“Yes,” said Tom, coming up, “I’ve been out to look, and the fire just came up to your line, and then stopped.”

Mr. Payson was deeply affected by the intelligence, for, knowing that no human power could stay the advancing flames, upon the cabin top he had been praying that the wind might change. Was it in answer to his silent petitions that it had taken place in so timely a manner?