"Well, I consent," said Squire Hardy; "but only on condition that grandmamma shall tell hers, and the rest shall follow."
This was agreed to by all. The party drew their chairs round the fire. Ned, who was never troubled with bashfulness, squeezed his stool in close to the fire, and all prepared to listen to the tale of:
THE LONG CHRISTMAS EVE.
"I was born in Massachusetts. My father was a cabinet-maker, an excellent workman, as I have heard, and, having a great turn for mechanics, he was always poring over some new invention or other—some labor-saving machine or new device for warming. They say necessity is the mother of invention. I am disposed to think that invention is often the mother of necessity. At least it was so in my father's case, for, though a perfectly steady, sober man and a good workman, we were always poor. And when my father died, my dear mother was left with six children and very little else."
"I was the eldest, and when I was about fifteen, she determined to send me out to my grandfather, who had removed to Michigan some years before, and now lived upon a fine farm in one of the earliest settled counties of that State. I was delighted with the idea, partly because I liked the notion of seeing life in a new country, partly because I was very desirous of doing something to help my mother. I thought that by working a few years with my grandfather, I should learn how to manage a farm, so that in time, I could take a piece of land of my own, and make a home for my mother and the other children."
"I shall say nothing of the journey, though a journey in those days was a very different matter from what it is now. A stage-coach was then the most expeditious mode of travelling, and people thought ten miles an hour was wonderful speed. But the roads were very bad in the spring and fall, and often the heavy coach swept along at a snail's pace, happy if it could get through without being overturned or stuck fast in the mud. But a stage-coach was far beyond my means. My mother heard of a family who were removing to the West, and who agreed to take me as far as Detroit, and board me on the way, in consideration of my help in driving, etc."
"We travelled with two great covered wagons and carried our own provisions for the most part—sometimes camping out when the weather was fine, sometimes staying at one of the taverns, which then abounded upon the east and west roads. The people were reasonably kind to me, but travelling in this way was tedious, toilsome work, and right glad was I when I reached Detroit and found my grandfather waiting for me."
"Detroit was something of a city as long ago as that, but it certainly was not a very splendid one, and I thought in all my travels, I had never seen anything equal to the mud in the streets. At that time, and for a long time afterwards, the ladies used to go to parties in carts—regular carts, and very strongly built at that."
"We reached my grandfather's house in safety, and I found him very comfortably situated in a new farm-house, with plenty of room and abundance of comforts about him. Like all his neighbors, he had taken up new land, but, having a good cash capital to begin with, he was able to go on with his improvements more rapidly than most of them, and was now by far the richest and most important man in the county."
"He owned a grist-mill and saw-mill on the river, and as everybody in the neighborhood brought their corn to him to be ground, he had plenty both of custom and company. My grandmother was a very charitable woman, and when the poor people came with a bag of corn to be made into meal, she would often give them a few apples, a loaf of wheat bread, or a crust of gingerbread to take home to their children."