The Gentleman from Everywhere | Page 3

and partridges when ammunition could be
obtained, forded rivers, narrowly escaping drowning in the swift
currents, and suffered from chills and fever.
One dark night some gypsies stole our antediluvian horse and cow. The
barking of the faithful dog awakened father and brothers who rushed to
the rescue, leaving mother half dead with fear; but at length the
marauders were overtaken, shots were exchanged, heads were broken,
and after a fierce struggle and long wandering, lost in the woods, our
fiery steeds were once more chained to our chariot wheels.
The next day we came to a wide river which it was impossible to ford,
but mercy, which sometimes "tempers the blast to the shorn lamb," sent
us relief in the shape of an antiquated gundalow floating on the tide.
Like Noah and family of old, we managed to embark on this ancient
ark, and paddled to the further shore.

There we miraculously escaped the scalping knife and tomahawk.
While painfully making our way through the primeval forest, we were
suddenly saluted by the ferocious war-whoop, and a dozen Indians
barred our way, flourishing their primitive implements of warfare. A
shot from father's double-barreled gun sent them flying to cover, our
steeds rushed forward with a speed hitherto unknown, the prairie
schooner rocked like a boat in a cyclone, the mother shrieked, the
enfant terrible howled like a bull of Bashan, and just as the "Red
devils" were closing in from the rear, the mouth of a cave loomed up in
the hillside into which dashed "pegasus and mooly cow" pell-mell.
Our red admirers halted almost at the muzzle of the gun and the blades
of my brothers' axes. Luckily the Indians had neither firearms nor bows
and arrows. They made rushes occasionally, but the shotgun wounded
several, the axes intimidated, and they seemed about to settle down to a
siege when, with a tremendous shouting and singing of "Tippecanoe
and Tyler too," a band of picturesquely arrayed white men came
marching along the trail. The enemy took to their heels, and we learned
that our rescuers had been to a William Henry Harrison parade and
barbecue, for this was the time of the famous "hard cider" campaign.
The Indians had been there too and, filling up with "fire water," their
former war-path proclivities had returned to their "empty, swept, and
garnished" minds, to the extent that they yearned to decorate their belts
with our scalps.
Our preservers scattered to their homes, and the would-be scalpers were
seen no more, leaving the world to darkness and to us in the woods.
The woods, where Adam and Eve lived and loved, where Pan piped,
and Satyrs danced, the opera house of birds; the woods, green,
imparadisaical, mystic, tranquillizing--to the poet perhaps when all is
well--but to us, they seemed haunted by spirits of evil, the yells of the
demons seemed to echo and reecho; but an indefinable something
seemed to sympathize with the infinite pathos of our lives, and at last
sleep, "the brother of death," folded us in his arms, and the curtain fell.
"There is a place called Pillow-land, Where gales can never sweep
Across the pebbles on the strand That girds the Sea of Sleep.

'Tis here where grief lets loose the rein, And age forgets to weep, For
all are children once again, Who cross the Sea of Sleep.
The gates are ope'd at daylight close, When weary ones may creep,
Lulled in the arms of sweet repose, Across the Sea of Sleep.
Oh weary heart, and toil-worn hand, At eve comes rest to thee, When
ply the boats to Pillow-land, Across the Sleepy sea.
Thank God for this sweet Pillow-land, Where weary ones may creep,
And breathe the perfume on the strand That girds the Sea of Sleep."
It is pleasant in this sunset of life, to recall the testimony of my brothers
that through all those troublous scenes, father and mother were soothed
and consoled by an unfaltering faith in the ultimate triumph of the good
and true, that their faces were often illumined as they repeated to each
other those priceless words of the sweet singer,
"Drifting over a sunless sea, cold dreary mists encircling me, Toiling
over a dusty road with foes within and foes abroad, Weary, I cast my
soul on Thee, mighty to save even me, Jesus Thou Son of God."
At last the "perils by land and perils by sea, and perils from false
brethren," this long, long journey ended and we reached the promised
land. We halted in old Byfield, in the state of Massachusetts, with
worldly goods consisting of a bushel of barberries, threadbare toilets,
and the ancient equipage dilapidated as aforesaid.
After much tribulation, father took a farm "on shares," which was
found to result in endless toil to