LOOKING OVER ESAU’S LINE FENCE AT THE WRITER
Photograph taken in 1907 while on a Moose Hunt.
We were very poor financially, and as I was second-oldest boy in a family of ten children, I had to put a shoulder to the wheel and help roll the bread-wagon. The result is I was educated for ditching, cutting cord-wood, and splitting rails. In the spring of 1878 father decided to migrate, and at the age of thirteen I was liberated here in Canada, a sportman’s paradise. I took to the woods as naturally as a park hare, and I know I was father’s favorite because he always called me to build the fire in the morning, and when the other boys would lodge a tree I have often heard him shout, “Come out and come away from it! You’ll get ’urt! Leave it w’ile Jack comes; ’e’ll go hunder and cut it down.” If we were splitting rails, father always set the wedges, permitting me to handle the maul.
Father and mother enjoyed life together nearly sixty years and put up with the mingled enjoyment and annoyance of us ten children. How some of father’s teachings still ring in my ears! When I have gone to him with complaints about others he has often said, “Shut up; I don’t want to ’ear it. But if you have some of your own failings to tell, let’s ’ear ’um.” Yes, he was always short but to the point. One piece of advice that he gave us boys I have always tried to practise; that was: whenever we grabbed hold of anything and found it was red-hot, to drop it.
But now let me lay these smiling facts aside for a few seconds and close my introduction to you in real earnest. For, outside of unavoidable sadness, my life has been one continuous round of enjoyment made up of failures and disappointments and dark, stormy clouds, which have been completely trampled out of existence by success that in every case exceeded my expectations, and has caused the sun to shine so brightly that it has illumined my path clear up to the Great Divide, and given me an imaginary glimpse of the beautiful Beyond.
CHAPTER II.
My First Pets.
Well, the first pet I can remember having was a young blue jay. I was, of course, very anxious that he should live, so I filled him to the top with fish worms. The next morning the blue was there, but the jay was silent.
The next I have any recollection of was when father took our pet ’possum by the handle and wound it around the corner of the old stable, to settle a quarrel which arose between my brother and myself over its ownership.
I remember I started one spring with a pair of white rabbits, and when fall came, I had every box on the premises full; even father’s old wagon-box was turned up-side-down with a snarl of rabbits under it, and when he used the box my troubles were many. As I knew how to set traps around my rabbit pens I am strongly of the opinion that some of the neighbors’ cats haven’t got home yet.
How well do I recollect seeing the wild geese, and hearing their “Honk! Honk!” as I strained my young eyes to see them ’way up there, often having to look twice before seeing them, as they passed, in spring and fall, over the good old State of Ohio on their migrating trips. Oh, how I used to stand with clenched hands and wish I were a man so I could follow them somewhere and secure one, but not until I got to Canada did the real fun begin.
All kinds of game, and such a variety of pets as I had; squirrels, coons, foxes, crows and ravens, and I even got a nest of young hen hawks and kept them until father found it out. You know in those days there was one day in the week that we did not work, and I made every minute count; and although I had miles and miles of woods to roam through, night and day, yet my ambition was a little higher. So I secured a pair of tree-climbers, and then there was no tree high enough for Mrs. Crow or Mrs. Hawk to raise her young so as to be out of my reach.