Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends

by Fanny Fern

Touch not a single bough,"—

for, a house, you know, can be put up by any carpenter who owns a set of tools, but it takes many a long year of dew and sunshine to make those grand old trees tower up to heaven.

However, it was all fine fun for Mitty, who sat on an old stump, with her chin resting in her hands, watching to see the stout old trunk stand like a rock against their heavy blows; then lean a little; then creak, as if it were groaning with pain that its green branches must so soon wither; then totter; then fall, crashing to the earth, like the "giant" before little "David." Mitty liked it, though it was rather dangerous sport; for, if the tree had fallen upon her pretty little head, she never would have tossed back her bright curls again.

Mitty was just the right sort of a Mitty for a little frontier girl. She seemed to know just when to hand her father the axe, or the hatchet, or the pick-axe; and just when they could rest a minute to take a drink of water, or a mouthful of bread and cheese. She didn't talk to them when they were busy, but amused herself making little log houses, with chips, for her dolly. She didn't scream or run, if a snake or a rabbit went over her foot; she was not all the time conjuring up bears, and tigers, and raccoons, or catching hold of her father every time she heard a little squirrel squeal;—not she—she loved everything; and her soul looked out as fearlessly from her sweet blue eyes, as if pain and danger and death had never followed the Serpent into Eden.

Now, I suppose you are wondering what people so buried in the woods did for stores, and shops, in which to buy things, and for meeting-houses and newspapers.

In the first place, when they went there, they made up their minds that silk dresses and ice-creams didn't grow on frontier bushes! and they soon became astonished to find how many things there were that were not at all necessary to their happiness, which they had always felt they could not do without.

They kept a cow, and she found them in milk; they kept hens, and the hens kept them in eggs; they kept a pig, and the pig made no objection to being cut up, whenever they got ready to eat him; then, they brought meal and flour enough with them, to last till they could plough the land, and raise corn and wheat of their own, which they intended doing as soon as the log house should be raised over their heads.

Oh, they got on famously. It was good, healthy work, this digging, and hewing, and ploughing. It made the muscles on their arms stand out like whip cords; it bronzed their pale faces, and made their eyes bright, and gave them a good appetite for their bread and milk; and when they went to bed, they didn't stop to see if the seam of the sheet was exactly in the middle, or to count the feathers in the pillows under their heads. They had neighbors (off in different directions); some four miles away; some two; some six, and some eight. Not city neighbors who shut themselves up in their great jails of houses, and wouldn't care if a hearse stood before your door every day in the year. No, indeed! They were warm-hearted country folks, with hearts as big as their pumpkins. If you were out of meal, or molasses, or sugar, or tea, you were welcome to borrow of them till you could spare time to send to "the settlement" for some. That's the way they lived. The men folks had too many trees to cut down to keep tackling up the old oxen every five minutes, and go "gee-hawing" over to the stores, every time the women wanted an Indian cake. No; they borrowed of each other till somebody had time to go to the store or to mill; and then, whoever went, took all their errands and did them up in a bunch, to save time. They went by the "golden rule."

People who live in the woods, where the trees are all the time whispering of God, and the little birds singing of Him, don't feel like being quarrelsome, and disobliging, and ugly; no, they leave that to city people, who live in such a whirl that they never remember they have a soul till Death comes after it.

Well, as I was saying, they helped one another. Orphy Smith, Mr. Moore's next neighbor, took his bag of corn one day, to carry it to mill. Mitty was very glad, because they had been out of meal some days, and she was rather tired of potatoes. So she made up her mind, and her mouth, that when Orphy came back, they would all have "a prime supper." But Orphy didn't come back that night, or the next morning, either; but, late the next afternoon, he came crawling back, with the meal, and told them that "he should have been home with it long ago, if that pesky wheel hadn't come off his wagon, and it hadn't taken such a powerful long time to blacksmith it on again."