“I guess not,” replied Clinton; “but you didn’t build it with an axe, did you?”
“I didn’t have much of anything else to work with, I assure you,” said Uncle Tim. “There’s no knowing what you can do with an axe, until you set out and try. But come in—I guess your dinner’s about ready.”
Uncle Tim guessed right. The table was covered with tempting food, in great profusion, and Clinton and his father sat down to it with a good appetite.
“You don’t starve yourselves, up here in the woods,” said Mr. Davenport, glancing at the heaping dishes.
“No,” said Uncle Tim, “we can generally find something to eat; but it’s a pity you didn’t come along a little sooner, so as to have had some of our dinner.”
But the travellers did not pity themselves, if Uncle Tim did; for with the fried ham and eggs, the nice wheaten bread, the delicious milk, the sweet cakes and mountain cranberry sauce, the rich cheese, and tea sweetened with molasses, they were in no danger of starving.
After their meal, Clinton renewed his examination of the house; and Uncle Tim seeing he was interested in it, began to tell him how he built it. He pitched upon the spot about twenty years before; and after securing his title, he took his axe and went to work cutting down trees. The first trees he felled, he used in building a “camp,” a hut made of logs and covered with bark. After he had cleared about an acre, and lopped off the limbs of the fallen trees, he set them on fire in the fall. The logs, which remained unconsumed, were afterwards cut into lengths of ten or twelve feet, piled together in heaps, and again set on fire. Thus he had burned hundreds of cords of wood, to get rid of it, which would have sold for six or seven dollars a cord, could he have sent it to Portland or Boston. In the spring he planted his corn and potatoes, and then went to work again with his axe and cleared another piece. By-and-by he began to feel lonesome, for thus far he had been entirely alone, with the exception of a couple of trusty dogs; so he went back to the town from which he came, married a wife, and then returned to his home in the forest. After a while their family began to increase, and so they built a larger and better house,—the one in which they were now sitting.
This was the substance of Uncle Tim’s story, although he made a much longer one of it than I have done; for it was not very often that he saw a stranger, and when he did, his tongue was pretty sure to enjoy a holiday,—not of rest, but of action.
By this time, Mrs. Lewis had cleared off the table, and Clinton was not a little astonished to see it suddenly converted into a rude but capacious arm-chair! The round top of the table was turned up against the wall, thus forming the back of the chair; and the frame which supported it, became the arms. The object of this was to economize space as well as furniture,—for in log houses there is seldom any room to waste upon useless articles.
There were five rooms, but the partitions, instead of being of plastering, were made of wood. Clinton, noticing this, said:—