Eyes which can but ill define
Shapes that rise about and near,
Through the far horizon's line
Stretch a vision free and clear;
Memories feeble to retrace
Yesterday's immediate flow,
Find a dear familiar face
In each hour of long ago.
—Milnes.

In wandering through the woods where solitude seems to hold
undivided reign, so that one learns to fancy companionable qualities
in the flowers, and decided sympathetic intelligence in the
bright-eyed squirrel, it is not uncommon to find originals odd
enough to make the fortune of a human menagerie, such as will
doubtless form, at no distant day, a new resource for the curious.
If any of the experimental philosophers of the day should undertake
a collection of this nature, I recommend the woods of the
West as a hopeful field for the search. Odd people are odder in
the country than in town, because there is nothing like collision
to smooth down their salient points, and because solitude is the
nurse of reverie, which is well known to be the originator of many
an erratic freak. There is a foster relationship, at least between
solitude and oddity, and nowhere is this more evident than in the
free and easy new country. A fair specimen used to thrive in a
certain green wood, not a thousand miles from this spot; a veteran
who bore in his furrowed front the traces of many a year of hardship
and exposure, and whose eyes retained but little of the twinkling
light which must have distinguished them in early life, but
which had become submerged in at least a twilight darkness,
which scarce allowed him to distinguish the light of a candle.
His limbs were withered, and almost useless; his voice shrunk to
a piping treble, and his trembling hands but imperfectly performed
their favourite office of carrying a tumbler to his lips. His tongue

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alone escaped the general decay; and in this one organ were
concentrated (as it is with the touch in cases of blindness,) the
potency of all the rest. If we may trust his own account, his
adventures had been only less varied and wonderful, than those
of Sinbad or Baron Munchausen. But we used sometimes to
think distance may be the source of deception, in matters of time
as well as of space, and so made due allowance for faulty perspective
in his reminiscences.

His house was as different from all other houses, as he himself
was from all other men. It was shaped somewhat like a beehive;
and, instead of ordinary walls, the shingles continued in uninterrupted
courses from the peak to the ground. At one side was a
stick chimney, and this was finished on the top by the remnant
of a stone churn; whether put there to perform the legitimate
office of a chimney-pot, or merely as an architectural ornament, I
cannot say. It had an unique air, at any rate, when one first
espied it after miles of solitary riding, where no tree had fallen,
except those which were removed in making the road. A luxuriant
hop-vine crept up the shingles until it wound itself around
this same broken churn, and then, seeking further support, the
long ends still stretched out in every direction, so numerous and
so lithe, that every passing breeze made them whirl like greenrobed
fairies dancing hornpipes about the chimney, in preparation
for a descent upon the inhabitants below.

At the side opposite the chimney, was a sort of stair-case,
scarcely more than a ladder, leading to the upper chamber, carried
up outside through lack of room in the little cottage; and
this airy flight was the visible sign of a change which took place
in the old man's establishment, towards the latter part of his life.
A grand-daughter, the orphan of his only son, had come to him
in utter destitution, and this made it necessary to have a second
apartment in the shingled hive; so the stairs were built outside
as we have said, and Julia Brand was installed in the wee chamber
to which it led. She was a girl of twelve, perhaps, at this
time, and soon became all in all to her aged relative. But we
will put her off for the present, that we may recall at more length
our recollections of old Richard Brand. The race of rough old
pioneers, to which he belonged, was fast passing away; and

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emigration and improvement are sweeping from the face of the land,
every trace of their existence. The spirit by which they were
animated has no fellowship with steamboats and railroads; their
pleasures were not increased but diminished by the rapid accession
of population, for whom they had done much to prepare
the way. The younger and hardier of their number felt themselves
elbowed, and so pressed onward to the boundless prairies
of the far West; the old shrunk from contact with society, and
gathered themselves, as if to await the mighty hunter in characteristic
fashion. Old Brand belonged to the latter class. He
looked ninety; but much allowance must be made for winter
storms and night-watches, and such irregularities and exposure as
are sure to keep an account against man, and to score their demands
upon his body, both within and without.

We have said that the house had a wild and strange look, and
the aspect of the tenant of the little nest was that of an old wizard.
He would sit by the side of the door, enjoying the sunshine, and
making marks on the sand with the long staff which seldom
quitted his feeble hands, while his favourite cat purred at his feet,
or perched herself on his shoulder, rubbing herself against his
grey locks, unreproved. Weird and sad was his silent aspect;
but once set him talking, or place in his hands his battered violin,
and you would no longer find silence tiresome. One string was
generally all that the instrument could boast; but that one, like
the tongue of the owner, performed more than its share. It
could say,


Hey, Betty Martin, tip-toe, tip-toe,
Hey, Betty Martin, tip-toe fine:
Can't get a husband to please her, please her,
Can't get a husband to please her mind!
as plain as any human lips and teeth could make the same taunting
observation; but if you ventured to compare the old magician
to Paganini, “Humph!” he would say, with a toss of his little
grey head, “ninny I may be, but pagan I a'n't, any how; for do
I eat little babies, and drink nothing but water?”

Nobody ever ventured to give an affirmative answer to either

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branch of this question; so the old man triumphed in the refutation
of the slander.

Directly in front of the door by which old Brand usually sat,
was a pit, four or five feet deep, perhaps, and two feet in diameter
at the top, and still wider at the bottom, where it was strewn with
broken bottles and jugs. (Mr. Brand had, by some accident,
good store of these.) This pit was generally covered during the
day, but for many years the platform was at night drawn within
the door, with all the circumspection that attended the raising of
a draw-bridge before a castle gate in ancient times.

“Is that a wolf-trap?” inquired an uninitiated guest. An explosion
of laughter met this truly green question.

“A wolf-trap! O! massy! what a wolf-hunter you be! You
bought that 'ere fine broadcloth coat out of bounty money, didn't
ye? How I should laugh to see ye where our Jake was once,
when he war'n't more than twelve year old! You'd grin till a
wolf would be a fool to ye! I had a real wolf-trap then, I tell
ye! There had been a wolf around, that was the hungriest critter
you ever heard tell on. Nobody pretended to keep a sheep,
and as for little pigs, they war'n't a circumstance. He'd eat a
litter in one night. Well! I dug my trap plenty deep enough,
and all the dirt I took out on't was laid up o' one side, slantindicler,
up hill like, so as to make the jump a pretty good one; and
then the other sides was built up close with logs. It was a sneezer
of a trap. So there I baited and baited, and watched and waited;
but pigs was plenty where they was easier come at, and no wolf
came. By-and-by our old yellow mare died, and what does I do
but goes and whops th' old mare into the trap. `There!' says I
to Jake, says I, `that would catch th' old Nick; let's see what
the old wolf 'll say to it.' So the next night we watch'd, and it
war'n't hardly midnight, when the wolf come along to go to the
hog-pen. He scented old Poll quick enough; and I tell ye! the
way he went into the trap war'n't slow. It was jist as a young
feller falls in love; head over heels. Well! now the question
was, how we should kill the villain; and while we was a consultin'
about that, and one old hunter proposin' one thing, and
another another, our Jake says to me, says he, `Father,' says he,
`I've got a plan in my head that I know'll do! I'll bang him

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over the head with this knotty stick.' And before you could say
Jack Robinson, in that tarnal critter jump'd, and went at him.
It was a tough battle, I tell ye! The wolf grinned; but Jake he
never stopped to grin, but put it on to him as cool as a cowcumber,
till he got so he could see his brains, and then he was satisfied.
`Now pull me out!' says little Jake, says he, `And I tell ye what!
if it a'n't daylight, I want my breakfast!' And Jake was a show,
any how! What with his own scratches and the spatters of the
wolf's blood, he look'd as if the Indians had scalped him all over.”

“But what is this hole for?” persisted the visiter, who found
himself as far from the point as ever.

“Did you ever see a Indian?” said the wizard.

“No! oh yes; I saw Black Hawk and his party, at Washington—”

“Black Hawk! ho, ho, ho! and Tommy Hawk too, I 'spose!
Indians dress'd off to fool the big bugs up there! But I mean
real Indians—Indians at home, in the woods—devils that's as
thirsty for white men's blood as painters![9] Why, when I come
first into the Michigan, they were as thick as huckleberries.
We didn't mind shooting 'em any more than if they'd had four legs.
That's a foolish law that won't let a man kill an Indian! Some
people pretend to think the niggers haven't got souls, but for my
part I know they have; as for Indians, it's all nonsense! I was
brought up right in with the blacks. My father own'd a real
raft on 'em, and they was as human as any body. When my
father died, and every thing he had in the world wouldn't half
pay his debts, our old Momma Venus took mother home to her
cabin, and done for her as long as she lived. Not but what we
boys helped her as much as we could, but we had nothing to begin
with, and never had no larnin'. I was the oldest, and father
died when I was twelve year old, and he hadn't begun to think
about gettin' a schoolmaster on the plantation. I used to be in
with our niggers, that is, them that used to be ours; and though
I'd lick'd 'em and kick'd 'em many a time, they was jist as good
to me as if I'd been their own colour. But I wanted to get some
larnin', so I used to lie on the floor of their cabins, with my head
to the fire, and so study a spellin'-book some Yankees had gi'n

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me, by the light of the pine knots and hickory bark. The Yankee
people was good friends to me too, and when I got old enough,
some on 'em sent me down to New Orleans with a flat, loaded
with flour and bacon.

“Now in them days there was no goin' up and down the Mississippi
in comfort, upon 'count of the Spaniards. The very first
village I came to, they hailed me and asked for my pass. I told
'em the niggers carried passes, but that I was a free-born American,
and didn't need a pass to go any where upon airth. So I
took no further notice of the whiskerandoes, till jist as I turn'd the
next pint, what should I see but a mud fort, and a passel of sojers
gettin' ready to fire into me. This looked squally, and I come to.
They soon boarded me, and had my boat tied to a tree and my
hands behind my back before you could whistle. I told the boy
that was with me to stick by and see that nothing happened to the
cargo, and off I went to prison; nothing but a log-prison, but
strong as thunder, and only a trap-door in the roof. So there I
was, in limbo, tucked up pretty nice. They gi'n me nothing to
eat but stale corn bread and pork rinds; not even a pickle to
make it go down. I think the days was squeez'd out longer, in
that black hole, than ever they was in Greenland. But there's
an end to most everything, and so there was to that. As good luck
would have it, the whiskerando governor came along down the
river and landed at the village, and hearin' of the Yankee, (they
call'd me a Yankee 'cause I was clear white,) hearin' that there
was a Yankee in the man-trap, he order'd me before him. There
he jabber'd away, and I jabber'd as fast as he did; but he was a
gentleman, and gentlemen is like free-masons, they can understand
each other all over the world. So the governor let me go,
and then he and the dons that were with him, walk'd down with
me to my craft, and gave me to understand they wanted to buy
some o' my fixins. So I roll'd 'em out a barrel of flour, and flung
up a passel of bacon, till they made signs there was enough, and
then the governor he pull'd out his gold-netted purse to pay me.
I laughed at him for thinkin' I would take pay from one that had
used me so well; and when he laid the money upon a box slily,
I tied it up in an old rag and chucked it ashore to him after I
pushed off; so he smil'd and nodded to me, and Peleg and I we

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took off our hats and gi'n him a rousin' hurrah, and I thought
that was the last I should see on him. But lo and behold! when
I got to New Orleans, there was my gentleman got there before
me, and remitted all government costs and charges, and found
buyers for my perduce and my craft, and like to have bought
me too. But I lik'd the bush, so I took my gun and set off afoot
through the wilderness, and found my way home again, with my
money all safe. When I come to settle with the Yankees, there
was a good slice for me and mother, so I come off to buy a tract
in the Michigan. I come streakin' along till I got to the Huron
river, and undertook to swim that with my clothes on and my
money tied round my neck. The stream was so high that I come
pretty near givin' up. It was `pull devil, pull baker,' with me,
and I was glad to ontie my money and let it go. That was before
these blessed banks eased a fellow of his money so slick, and you
had to carry hard cash. So mine went to the bottom, and it's
there yet for what I know. I went to work choppin' till I got
enough to buy me an eighty; and I bought and sold fourteen
times before I could get a farm to suit me; and like enough may
try again before I die.”

“But you were going to tell me about this hole.”

“Oh, the hole! yes—that 'ere hole! You see, when I first
settled, and the Indians was as thick as snakes, so that I used to
sleep with my head in an iron pot for fear they should shoot me
through the logs, I dug that hole and fix'd it just right for 'em, in
case they came prowlin' about in the night. I laid a teterin'
board over it, so that if you stepped on it, down you went; and
there was a stout string stretch'd acrost it and tied to the lock of
my rifle, and the rifle was pointed through a hole in the door; so
whoever fell into the hole let off the rifle, and stood a good
chance for a sugar-plum. I sot it so for years and never caught
an Indian, they're so cunning; and after they'd all pretty much
left these parts, I used to set it from habit. But at last I got
tired of it and put up my rifle at night, though I still sot my
trap; and the very first night after I left off puttin' the rifle
through the hole, who should come along but my own brother
from old Kentuck, that I hadn't seen for twenty year! He went
into the hole about the slickest, but it only tore his trowsers a little;
and wasn't I glad I hadn't sot the rifle?”

eaf241.n9

[9] Panthers.

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