D'Ri and I: A Tale of Daring Deeds in the Second War with the British. / Being the Memoirs of Colonel Ramon Bell, U.S.A.

Produced by Al Haines. Thanks to Dave Maddock for the Lilypond work.
A TALE of DARING DEEDS in the SECOND WAR with the BRITISH.
Being the Memoirs of Colonel Ramon Bell, U.S.A.
BY IRVING BACHELLER, author of Eben Holden.
1901
This is a tale of the adventurous and rugged pioneers, who, unconquered by other foes, were ever at war with the ancient wilderness, pushing the northern frontier of the white man farther and farther to the west. Early in the last century they had striped the wild waste of timber with roadways from Lake Champlain to Lake Ontario, and spotted it with sown acres wide and fair; and still, as they swung their axes with the mighty vigor of great arms, the forest fell before them,
In a long valley south of the St. Lawrence, sequestered by river, lake, and wilderness, they were slow to lose the simplicity, the dialect, and the poverty of their fathers.
Some Frenchmen of wealth and title, having fled the Reign of Terror, bought a tract of wild country there (six hundred and thirty thousand acres) and began to fill it with fine homes. It was said the great Napoleon himself would some day build a chateau among them. A few men of leisure built manor-houses on the river front, and so the Northern Yankee came to see something of the splendor of the far world, with contempt, as we may well imagine, for its waste of time and money.
Those days the North country was a theatre of interest and renown. Its play was a tragedy; its setting the ancient wilderness; its people of all conditions from king to farm hand. Chateau and cabin, trail and forest road, soldier and civilian, lake and river, now moonlit, now sunlit, now under ice and white with snow, were of the shifting scenes in that play. Sometimes the stage was overrun with cavalry and noisy with the clang of steel and the roar of the carronade.
The most important episodes herein are of history,—so romantic was the life of that time and region. The marriage is almost literally a matter of record.