A Womans Way Through Unknown Labrador | Page 5

quite account for Mr.
Hubbard's present state of mind, and I looked up enquiringly.
"You see, Wife, it means that I can take my Labrador trip whether
anyone sends me or not," he said triumphantly.
His eyes glowed and darkened and in his voice was the ring of a great
enthusiasm, for he had seen a Vision, and this trip was a vital part of
his dream.
The dream had begun years ago, when a boy lay out under the apple
trees of a quiet farm in Southern Michigan with elbows resting on the
pages of an old school geography, chin in palms and feet in air. The
book was open at the map of Canada, and there on the other page were
pictures of Indians dressed in skins with war bonnets on their heads;
pictures of white hunters also dressed in skins, paddling bark canoes;
winter pictures of dog-teams and sledges, the driver on his snow-shoes,
his long whip in hand. The boy would have given all the arrow-heads
he had for just one look at what he saw pictured there.
He was born, this boy, of generations of pioneer ancestors, the line of
his mother's side running back to Flanders of three hundred years ago,
through Michael Paulus Van Der Voort, who came to America from
Dendermonde, East Flanders, and whose marriage on 18th November,
1640, to Marie Rappelyea, was the fifth recorded marriage in New
Amsterdam, now New York. A branch runs back in England to John
Rogers the martyr. It is the boast of this family that none of the blood
has ever been known to "show the white feather." Among those

ancestors of recent date of whose deeds he was specially proud, were
the great-grandfather, Samuel Rogers, a pioneer preacher of the Church
of Christ among the early settlers of Kentucky and Missouri, and the
Grandfather Hubbard who took his part in the Indian fights of Ohio's
early history. On both mother's and father's side is a record of brave,
high-hearted, clean-living men and women, strong in Christian faith,
lovers of nature, all of them, and thus partakers in rich measure of that
which ennobles life.
The father, Leonidas Hubbard, had come "'cross country" from
Deerfield, Ohio, with gun on shoulder, when Michigan was still a
wilderness, and had chosen this site for his future home. He had taught
in a school for a time in his young manhood; but the call of the
out-of-doors was too strong, and forth he went again. When the
responsibilities of life made it necessary for him to limit his wanderings
he had halted here; and here on July 12th, 1872, the son Leonidas
Hubbard, Jr., was born.
He began by taking things very much to heart, joys and sorrows alike.
In his play he was always setting himself some unaccomplishable task,
and then flying into a rage because he could not do it. The first great
trouble came with the advent of a baby sister who, some foolish one
told him, would steal from him his mother's heart. Passionately he
implored a big cousin to "take that little baby out and chop its head
off."
Later he found it all a mistake, that his mother's heart was still his own,
and so he was reconciled.
From earliest recollection he had listened with wide eyes through
winter evenings, while over a pan of baldwin apples his father talked
with some neighbour who had dropped in, of the early days when they
had hunted deer and wolves and wild turkeys over this country where
were now the thrifty Michigan farms. There were, too, his father's
stories of his own adventures as hunter and miner in the mountains of
the West.
It seemed to him the time would never come when he would be big

enough to hunt and trap and travel through the forests as his father had
done. He grew so slowly; but the years did pass, and at last one day the
boy almost died of gladness when his father told him he was big
enough now to learn to trap, and that he should have a lesson tomorrow.
It was the first great overwhelming joy.
There was also a first great crime.
While waiting for this happy time to come he had learned to do other
things, among them to throw stones. It was necessary, however, to be
careful what was aimed at. The birds made tempting marks; but
song-birds were sacred things, and temptation had to be resisted.
One day while he played in the yard with his little sister, resentment
having turned to devotion, a wren flew down to the wood pile and
began its song. It happened at that very moment he had a stone in his
hand. He didn't quite have time to think before