Of course I did not relate my own experience, nor tell them that I had been sick. I gave them a little of the experience of others that I had heard. I had an old temperance song book from which I borrowed some extracts and appropriated them as my own. I swung my arms a little and with my finger pointed out the points. I stepped around a little and tried to stamp to make them believe that what I said was true. As I advanced and became more interested I spoke loud, to let them know it was I, and that I was in earnest. I admonished them all to let whisky alone. Told some of its pernicious effects; how much money it cost, how many lives it had taken, how many tears it had caused to flow and how many homes it had made desolate.
When I came away I was pleased with myself, and thought I had made quite a sensation. A few days afterward I met my friend, William Beal, and asked him how the neighbors liked the temperance meeting. Of course, I was anxious to know what they said about my speech. He told me the old lady said I was "fluent and tonguey," that I was like a sort of a lawyer, she named, who lived at Dearbornville. I knew this man well, and hadn't a very good opinion of him. But what she said was not so much of a breaker as what the old gentleman said, for I considered him in many respects a very intelligent man. He came here from Westchester County, near Peakskill. He owned the farm and lived on it (I have seen where he lived) which was given to John Spaulding for the capture of Major Andre. His occupation there was farming and droving. He drove cattle to New York city in an early day, when that great metropolis was but a small city. I have often heard him tell about stopping at Bullshead. He said that was the drovers' headquarters. I know he was worth ten thousand dollars there, at one time; how much more I cannot say, but somehow his thousands dwindled to hundreds and he came here to seek a second fortune.
Of course I thought a man of his experience was capable of forming a pretty correct opinion of me. He said, "Who is he? His father brought him here, and dropped him in the woods; he's been to mill once and to meeting twice. What does he know?"
When I heard this it amused me very much, although the decision seemed to be against me. I made no more inquiries about temperance meeting, in fact, I didn't care to hear any more about it.
Writing my first temperance effort has blown all the wind out of my sails, and if I were not relating actual occurrences I should certainly be run ashore. As it is, sleep may invigorate and bring back my memory. When relating facts it is not necessary to call on any muse, or fast, or roam into a shady bower, where so many have found their thoughts. When relating facts, fancy is hot required to soar untrodden heights where thought has seldom reached; but too freely come back all the weary days, the toils, fears and vexations of my early life in Michigan, if not frightened away by the memory of the decision of the old lady and gentleman, on my temperance speech.
Perhaps I should say, in honor of that old gentleman, Mr. Joseph Pardee, now deceased, that he was well advanced in years when he came to Michigan, in the fall of 1833, stuck his stakes and built the first log house on the Ecorse, west of the French settlement, at its mouth, on Detroit River. He was a man of a strong-mind and an iron will. He cleared up his land, made it a beautiful farm, rescued it from the wilderness, acquired, in fact, a good fortune. When he died, at the good old age of eighty-one years, he left his family in excellent circumstances. He died in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine.
CHAPTER VI.
HOW WE FOUND OUR CATTLE.
The old cow always wore the bell. Early in the spring, when there were no flies or mosquitoes to drive them up the cattle sometimes wandered off. At such times, when we went to our chopping or work, we watched them, to see which way they went, and listened to the bell after they were out of sight in order that we might know which way to go after them if they didn't return. Sometimes the bell went out of hearing but I was careful to remember which way I heard it last.
Before night I would start to look for them, going in the direction I last heard them. I would go half a mile or so into the woods, then stop and listen, to see if I could hear the faintest sound of the bell. If I could not hear it I went farther in the same direction then stopped and listened again. Then if I did not hear it I took another direction, went a piece and stopped again, and if I heard the least sound of it I knew it from all other bells because I had heard it so often before.