“Much obliged, but we want to do a little more than that.”
“Well, haven’t you got a good farm, all paid for, or something to make one of? Ain’t you a boat-builder? Ain’t John a blacksmith?”
“If anybody was living here,” said John, “they could put in and do a lot of work, then go off and hunt, have a grand time, get straightened out, the kinks taken out of them, and then come back and work all the better.”
“Yes,” replied Charlie; “and it pays to net pigeons, kill bears and coons, and get the flesh to eat; also sea-fowl, seals, and deer, and have the feathers and skins to sell. But in Portland, if you’re out of work, all you can do is to sit on the anvil, or stand in the sun, leaning against an upright in the ship-yard, chewing chips, making up sour faces, and saying, ‘O, I wish somebody would give me a job! some farmer lose his axe and want another, or some ship would get cast away, so I could build one.’ I tell you, I won’t go back. The more I think of it, the more I don’t want to.”
“On the strength of that,” said Joe, “kill half a dozen of these pigeons, and we’ll go home and get some baskets to take the rest to the cage.”
Our readers know that Charlie was exceedingly fond, not only of the soil, but of trees and plants of all kinds. Born and reared in early life in a land where trees are comparatively rare, and prized accordingly, he was not at all pleased with the wholesale destruction Joe had made with axe and firebrand. Joe, on the other hand, possessed the true spirit of a pioneer, and had been educated to consider trees as natural enemies, and that a person’s pluck was to be measured by the number he could destroy.
“Joe,” said Charlie, “why didn’t you save some of those splendid great maples, ash, and birches to shade your homestead?”
“Save ’em! I’ve had trouble enough to get rid of ’em. I’d rather have corn and wheat.”
“But after you get all this land into grass, and a frame house built, then you’ll wish you had, and go to setting them out; and by the time they’re grown you’ll be an old man. Don’t you think the trees around our brook, and before Captain Rhines’s house, look handsome?”
“Yes,” said his wife, “I’m sure I do; they look beautiful. There’s one tree I don’t believe Captain Rhines would sell for a hundred dollars.”