A wondrous tracery appears:
A cabin of the western wild
Shelters in sleep a new-born child,
Nor nurse, nor parent dear, can know
The way those infant feet must go;
And yet a nation’s help and hope
Are sealed within that horoscope.”
It was certainly impossible for a pioneer of the early frontier to imagine how the rich live now, but it is not so hard for any one now to imagine how people lived then, if he will go into the deep woods with only a few simple tools and try to live. It can be done and it will probably be a healthful experience, but not an experience that any person would be expected to try twice.
It is therefore not needful to the setting of our story about the making of a man, for any extended description to be made of the ignorance and the poverty common to those times.
It is enough for us to say with Maurice Thompson in his lines: