Love your mother, little ones.
[ FRONTIER LIFE:
OR,
MITTY MOORE. ]
"Frontier life!" I think I hear my little readers echo, knitting their brows; "frontier life,—I wish Fanny Fern wouldn't write about things we don't understand."
Suppose I should tell you a story to make you understand it? How would you like that?
Mitty Moore's father took it into his head that he should like frontier life. So he traveled hundred and hundreds of miles—way off where the sun goes down, to find a place in which to settle. The roads were rough and bad. Sometimes it would be a long while before they reached a place where travelers could get drink and food; and Mitty's little bones would ache, and she began to think with "Paddy," that the end of the journey was cut off.
At last Mr. Moore found a place to his mind; and they all halted, with the old baggage wagon, in the woods; and Mitty, and her little brothers and sisters, jumped out and stretched their limbs, and looked way up into the great tall trees to try to see the tops, which seemed to pierce the clouds.
They made a sort of pic-nic dinner, out of some provisions stowed away in the old wagon; after which Mitty's father and eldest brother pulled off their coats, stripped up their shirt-sleeves, and went to work to make a "clearing," as they called it, for a log house—felling the trees, and cutting and burning the underbrush.
It took them a long while to hew down those fine old trees. I'm glad I didn't see it done, for I should have sung out, with General Morris,
"Woodman! spare that tree!