“Our latch-string hangs out!” exclaimed Charlie, triumphantly, when this piece of work was done. “I must say I never knew before what it meant to have the ‘latch-string hanging out’ for all comers. See, Oscar, when we shut up the house for the night, all we have to do is to pull in the latch-string, and the door is barred.”
“Likewise, when you have dropped your jackknife through a crack in the floor into the cellar beneath, all you have to do is to turn over a puncheon or two and get down and find it,” said Sandy, coolly, as he took up two slabs and hunted for 132 his knife. The boys soon found that although their home was rude and not very elegant as to its furniture, it had many conveniences that more elaborate and handsomer houses did not have. There were no floors to wash, hardly to sweep. As their surroundings were simple, their wants were few. It was a free and easy life that they were gradually drifting into, here in the wilderness.
Charlie declared that the cabin ought to have a name. As yet, the land on which they had settled had no name except that of the river by which it lay. The boys thought it would give some sort of distinction to their home if they gave it a title. “Liberty Hall,” they thought would be a good name to put on the roof of their log-cabin. Something out of Cooper’s novels, Oscar proposed, would be the best for the locality.
“‘Hog-and-hominy,’ how would that suit?” asked Sandy, with a laugh. “Unless we get some buffalo or antelope meat pretty soon, it will be hog and hominy to the end of the chapter.”
“Why not call it the John G. Whittier cabin?” said Uncle Aleck, looking up from his work of shaping an ox-yoke.
“The very thing, daddy!” shouted Sandy, clapping his hands. “Only don’t you think that’s a very long name to say in a hurry? Whittier would be shorter, you know. But, then,” he added, doubtfully, “it isn’t everybody that would know which Whittier was meant by that, would they?” 133
“Sandy seems to think that the entire population of Kansas will be coming here, some day, to read that name, if we ever have it. We have been here two months now, and no living soul but ourselves and Younkins has ever been in these diggings; not one. Oh, I say, let’s put up just nothing but ‘Whittier’ over the door there. We’ll know what that means, and if anybody comes in the course of time, I’ll warrant he’ll soon find out which Whittier it means.” This was Oscar’s view of the case.
“Good for you, Oscar!” said his uncle. “Whittier let it be.”
Before sundown, that day, a straight-grained shake of pine, free from knot or blemish, had been well smoothed down with the draw-shave, and on its fair surface, writ large, was the beloved name of the New England poet, thus: WHITTIER.
This was fastened securely over the entrance of the new log-cabin, and the Boy Settlers, satisfied with their work, stood off at a little distance and gave it three cheers. The new home was named.