Logging Family Standing on a Cedar Stump.
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SCANDINAVIANS AT CEDARHOME.
[CHAPTER XI.]

Three miles east of Stanwood smiles a beautiful villa, which fifteen years ago received the baptism Cedarhome. It seems as though Nature in her wisdom long, long ago took special pains to prepare a plot for this smoothly sloping panorama. If it had been whittled out to order for a quiet, sober and intelligent people nothing more consistent could have been expected.

In early days a dense forest clothed this spot, and savage brutes ruled unrestrained. But some forty years ago the irascible agent—fire—resolved to show his power, which he did like an unchained demon. He sent his red flames from tree to tree, consuming big and small, save some stubborn giants, which remained black skeletons in melancholy loneliness. Bears, cougars, wild-cats, and other inhabitants of the forest picked up their feet and with lightning speed sought the mountains for refuge.

The once rich sylva, where evergreen and foliage were wont to join in sweet choruses, was now a charcoal desert with a few angry monsters frowning in the air, squealing and cracking to the breath of every breeze.

Years elapsed, the sun sent down his gentle beams, the clouds unlocked their opulent stores, and the parched earth drank her fill, and gave birth to shoots that blossomed into a carpet of green.