I had tried my hand at making cradles
in a furniture-shop, but at two dollars and forty cents per dozen
there was not much profit in it. So I took to the woods and learned
to swing an axe in the American fashion that had charmed me so at
Brady's Bend. I liked it much better, anyway, than being in the
house winter and summer. It is well that we are fashioned that
way, some for indoors and some for outdoors, for so the work of the
world is all done; but it has always seemed to me that the indoor
folk take too big a share of credit to themselves, as though there
were special virtue in that, though I think that the reverse is
the case. At least it seems more natural to want to be out in the
open where the sun shines and the winds blow. When I was not chopping
wood I was helping with the ice harvest on the lake or repairing
the steamer that ran in summer between Jamestown and Mayville.
My home was in Dexterville, a mile or so out of town, where there
lived a Danish family, the Romers, at whose home I was made welcome.
The friendship which grew up between us has endured through life
and been to me a treasure.
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