The food was what has been already named. The meat
was venison, bear, raccoon, wild turkey, wild duck, and
pheasant; the drink was water, or rye coffee, or whisky,
which the little stills everywhere supplied only too abundantly.
Wheat bread was long unknown, and corn cakes 10
of various makings and bakings supplied its place. The
most delicious morsel of all was corn grated while still in
the milk and fashioned into round cakes eaten hot from
the clapboard before the fire, or from the mysterious depths
of the Dutch oven buried in coals and ashes on the hearth. 15
There was soon a great flow of milk from the kine that
multiplied in the pastures in the woods, and there was sweetening
enough from the maple tree and the bee tree, but
salt was very scarce and very dear, and long journeys
were made through the perilous woods to and from the 20
licks, or salt springs, which the deer had discovered before
the white man or the red man knew them.
The bees which hived their honey in the hollow trees
were tame bees gone wild, and with the coming of the
settlers some of the wild things increased so much that 25
they became a pest. Such were the crows which literally
blackened the fields after the settlers plowed, and which
the whole family had to fight from the corn when it was
planted. Such were the rabbits, and such, above all, were
the squirrels, which overran the farms and devoured every30
green thing till the people combined in great squirrel hunts
and destroyed them by tens of thousands. The larger
game had meanwhile disappeared. The buffalo and the
elk went first; the deer followed, and the bear, and even
the useless wolf. But long after these the poisonous reptiles
lingered, the rattlesnake, the moccasin, and the yet-deadlier
copperhead; and it was only when the whole 5
country was cleared that they ceased to be a very common
danger.
—Stories of Ohio.
1. Make a pen or pencil sketch of the log house Howells describes; of the bedstead. Help the class make a display board of printed pictures that illustrate the objects mentioned.
2. What were the hardships of pioneering? The pleasures? Make a list of modern household conveniences the American pioneer did not have.
WITCHCRAFT
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) is one of the best-known figures in American literature. He was a New Englander, and most of his writings deal with events or situations located in New England. He was especially happy in retelling old stories or in constructing tales from historical events.
Sir William Phips became Governor of Massachusetts
in 1692. Almost as soon as he assumed the government
he became engaged in a frightful business which
might have perplexed a wiser and better-cultivated head
than his. This was the witchcraft delusion, which originated 5
in the wicked arts of a few children. They belonged
to the Rev. Mr. Parris, minister of Salem. These children
complained of being pinched, and pricked with pins, and
otherwise tormented, by the shapes of men and women,
who were supposed to have power to haunt them invisibly
both in darkness and daylight.