“At the close of the second day, the eight miles were accomplished, and we reached father’s property.  He had bought with the land a rough little log-house, or rather hut, as it had but one room, and in this we were to live until he could build a better one.  At the sight of her dreary home, mother’s heart fairly sunk, and I shall never forget her tears.”

Mamma paused for a moment; then steadying her voice, said: 

“I am prouder than ever of my mother when I think how nobly she bore the separation from her darling son, and her exile from her family, and, you may almost say, from civilization.  She could not, at first, it is true, restrain her tears, but from that moment never a murmur of complaint crossed her brave lips, and we children never dreamed, till years later, how keenly she felt the sacrifice that she had been compelled to make.”

“But were you really so far out of the world, Aunt Esther?” inquired Ida.  “Did you have no neighbors at all?  We had two uncles there, I thought.  Surely they must have been some society for grandmamma?”

“I do not believe,” mamma replied, “that any other spot upon the globe, not even Robinson Crusoe’s island, could now seem so desolate and shut off from all communication as our home in the woods did then.  You must remember that there were no railways in 1826, which fact made us still more remote from the rest of the world.  Now, with the railways spreading in every direction over our vast Republic, you can scarcely imagine what it was to live with an almost impenetrable forest between yourself and your nearest neighbor.  Uncle Benjamin occupied what was called the ‘next lot,’ and had the ground been cleared, the distance from us would still have been three-quarters of a mile; but when the distance was increased three-fold by the darkness of the forest, and there was in addition every probability of meeting a bear or two on the way, you can imagine that being neighborly was scarcely practicable.”

“Bears!” exclaimed Gabrielle, her eyes sparkling with excitement; “how lovely!  Darling auntie, do tell us more about them.  It must have been like one of Captain Mayne Reid’s stories, to live in that delightful Pennsylvania!”

“Our life there,” said mamma, “certainly equalled the wildest tales of adventures experienced by early settlers that I have ever read, and we children found it quite as ‘lovely’ as you imagine it to have been.  We never felt isolated, although our entire ‘clearing’ consisted of only four acres, upon which our house stood, and any further prospect was shut out by the woods.  To us it was delightful to realize the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, which, as I told you, brother had read to us in Vermont, merely changing tropical animals and scenery for that of the North.  I do not remember ever being afraid, but the wolves, who nightly howled in gangs about our slightly built house, the bears who ate up the corn in our little patch, the porcupines who gnawed the hoops off our pork barrels, and the frightful, screaming owls, struck terror to poor mother’s heart.