oyed!
One learns how very little is necessary either for comfort or
happiness. I made a four-pound spiced ginger cake, baked some bread,
mended my riding dress, cleaned up generally, wrote some letters with
the hope that some day they might be posted and took a magnificent
walk, reaching the cabin again in the melancholy glory which now
immediately precedes the darkness.

We were all busy getting our supper ready when the dogs began to bark
furiously, and we heard the noise of horses. "Evans at last!" we
exclaimed, but we were wrong. Mr. Kavan went out, and returned saying
that it was a young man who had come up with Evans's wagon and team,
and that the wagon had gone over into a gulch seven miles from here.
Mr. Kavan looked very grave. "It's another mouth to feed," he said.
They asked no questions, and brought the lad in, a slangy, assured
fellow of twenty, who, having fallen into delicate health at a
theological college, had been sent up here by Evans to work for his
board. The men were too courteous to ask him what he was doing up
here, but I boldly asked him where he lived, and to our dismay he
replied, "I've come to live here." We discussed the food question
gravely, as it presented a real difficulty. We put him into a
bed-closet opening from the kitchen, and decided to see what he was fit
for before giving him work. We were very much amazed, in truth, at his
coming here. He is evidently a shallow, arrogant youth.

We have decided that to-day is November 26th; to-morrow is Thanksgiving
Day, and we are planning a feast, though Mr. K. said to me again this
morning, with a doleful face, "You see there's another mouth to feed."
This "mouth" has come up to try the panacea of manual labor, but he is
town bred, and I see that he will do nothing. He is writing poetry,
and while I was busy to-day began to read it aloud to me, asking for my
criticism. He is just at the age when everything literary has a
fascination, and every literary person is a hero, specially Dr.
Holland. Last night was fearful from the lifting of the cabin and the
breaking of the mud from the roof. We sat with fine gravel driving in
our faces, and this morning I carried four shovelfuls of mud out of my
room. After breakfast, Mr. Kavan, Mr. Lyman, and I, with the two wagon
horses, rode the seven miles to the scene of yesterday's disaster in a
perfect gale of wind. I felt like a servant going out for a day's
"pleasuring," hurrying "through