d the crows caw and clamor; the
thrushes and swamp robins bandy their boasts in challenges of music;
the blue jay gossips, and the cuckoo cries.

"Whose cabin is this?" do you inquire? Tilly Troffater's. A
swaggering, boisterous little body too, is he, and his legs are short
and bandy, as you have seen a creeper cockerel's: he has one eye black
and one eye blue, and both are glazed and dull as the knobs on earthen
tea-pot covers. His ears are round, and stick forward like a weasel's;
his form is square and supple, and he stands more than perpendicular.
Ready and sharp is he for a joke, cold and unfeeling in manner, and
troublesome as the varlet blackbirds that sit on a tree and gabble and
moot, while other birds give you music.

There sits his wife, milking the late-found cow. She has a ludicrous
look. An old rag of linsey-woolsey hugs her spindle form; her teeth
are shovels, and cleave down her nether lip; her eyes catch every point
of the compass across each other's glance; her forehead is low, her
hair, a smoky white, and her voice, now flat, now treble, and now
sharp. But a kinder, or more guileless heart never warmed a human
breast, than that which lies in Dinah Troffater's; and whoever were in
fault regarding her strange looks, they cannot criminate her as
accessary. She milks the cow, and yonder come leaping like vagrant
foxes, her half-wild children, with a few dry sticks for the cabin fire.

Going on two miles farther, we come to Mr. Waldron's, and find him
nestled quietly under a hill in his double log-house, with a view of
the lake on the west, and with comforts all around him. We find Aunt
Polly too, and she lays down her distaff, welcomes us in, tells us a
story of the backwoods, and gives us a taste of her new metheglin.

Then we come to Uncle Walter Mowry's, and hear he is off on a hunt in
the woods, while Aunt Huldah excuses the soap and sand on her hands,
and welcomes us in with joy.

Then we give Teezle a visit; then we see Wilson, and enter the shop on
the stream, where he makes chairs, shoes, and carpenter-work on a rainy
day; and he reminds us of the bear hunt. Then we see Flaxman, and hear
him and Phoebe sing the same old nasal song, and observe their thrift
and comfort. Then we visit Colwell, and the wives and children of all
greet us with kindness, and a frank good-will in all their words and
looks. Upon every heart among them, excepting the heart of Troffater,
fraternity, courage