w home of promise without you.

"I have seen many happy hours, and some that were gloomy since I came
here. Uncle Walter told the truth about this country; it is a land of
promise, handsome now in the state of nature. But you know that he who
comes here must labor hard, and endure many privations, before he
succeeds as he desires. God has blessed the Lake Country with a fine
soil and great advantages. Still, as I expected, money does not grow
on the bushes here, nor are the softest couches gathered from the
ground. Labor, honest, resolute labor alone can secure the objects of
good desire. For this I am ready with a strong hand and an ardent
heart; and trusting in God to prosper me, I mean to have a home and
farm that I can call mine. And while clearing a farm, and bringing
field after field to culture and beauty, will I not be clearing my
life, and bringing mind and heart to culture, fertility, light and
bloom?

"I know you would like it out here, and feel your young years rolling
back, and your hearts growing green again on the banks of the Cayuga.
The country is _very_ handsome. The deer are so tame they will almost
eat out of my hand. Fish and fowl are plenty. Each homely cabin is
the shelter of large and hopeful hearts, and the Indians are all
kindness to the settlers. O, when you can come and enter my home, will
we not take comfort? My love to all.

"Your affectionate son,

"M. FABENS."

III.

A BEAR HUNT.

Fabens was pleased with his neighbors, and warmly reciprocated the
interest they took in him. There was old Moses Waldron, the first
settler, an out-and-out backwoodsman; smart with an axe, sure with a
gun, free with a bowl of metheglin, open in hospitality, and an enemy
only to owls, and blackbirds, wolves, thieves, tories and the British.
He chased the tories and redcoats in his dreams, and talked to himself
while walking alone awake. The owls annoyed him sorely. Not because
they killed his pretty chickens, but because there was so little of
them beside their feathers, and their eyes were so monstrous white and
large, and they had such a ghostly halloo. Whenever he caught an owl's
hollow voice in ominous boomings from the woods, he stopped and cursed
him, and cried, "Ah hoo, hoo, ah hoo-ah; ah hoo, you pesky torment! if
I had you by the neck, I'd wring it for you, I'll warrant you I would,
ah-hoo-ah!"

Aunt Polly Waldron was a match for her husband; and while she was an
actu