Elijah Kellogg

“ Captain Rhines would have furnished his daughter abundantly; but she, like John, preferred to earn it herself.
“I never saw such children as mine are,” said the captain. “They won’t let me do anything for them.”
“Wait, father,” said Mary, “till we get a frame-house, and our land cleared. We may burn this up, and it is good enough for that: besides, father, I know how Charlie feels; he abhors the idea of marrying on; he will feel a good deal better to get under way himself: you know, you can give me any time, if you want to. Charlie, John, and Fred are all alike about being helped.” ”

“ Now what do you think, Ben?”
“I think you’ll do it; for if you, Hannah Murch, and Uncle Isaac get together, you’ll set the town on fire.”
“O, mother,” cried Charlie, “you are the best woman that ever was, or ever will be. Now, mother, you didn’t think, when I told you that night at milking that there would be a vessel built here before five years, there would be one built before your own door in two, and you would make her sails.” ”

“ After the war, and at the period of our tale, when the country was oppressed with debt, and its infant manufactures were struggling for existence, when Great Britain, while excluding us from her West India ports, was deluging the country with her manufactures in order to effectually crush our own, all true patriots, and the government to the extent that lay in its power, strove to sustain the old spirit of independence, and raise wool and flax. ”

“ Nobody else has died that you are much acquainted with; but old Mrs. Yelf is very sick, and you must go and see her. She has talked about you ever since you have been gone, and will never forget the good turns you did her after her husband died.”
“How is Uncle Isaac, father?”
“Smart as a steel trap; has killed lots of birds, and last winter bears, deer, and three wolves; and the last time I rode by there, I saw a seal-skin stretched on the barn.” ”

“ But in Portland, if you’re out of work, all you can do is to sit on the anvil, or stand in the sun, leaning against an upright in the ship-yard, chewing chips, making up sour faces, and saying, ‘O, I wish somebody would give me a job! some farmer lose his axe and want another, or some ship would get cast away, so I could build one.’ I tell you, I won’t go back. ”

“ The Hard-Scrabble returned, having made a 311 profitable voyage; and, as the spring opened, Charlie had leisure to attend to farming. He planted among the trees, whose naked branches flung no shadow, and whose dead limbs and seasoned trunks, continually dropping, afforded an inexhaustible supply of dry fuel.
At leisure intervals he hewed out timber for a house and barn frame; and, as he now had money, hired Ricker, and, after the harvest was gathered in the fall, cut down and burned up all the dry trunks of the trees, when the ground was wet, and there was no risk of the fires running. ”

“ I shall be contented if I have something to look forward to.”
“I suppose,” said Fred, “Captain Rhines or Mr. Ben would help us out if we got stuck.”
“Not with my consent,” said John. “If we’ve got to fall back on the old folks, I’ll have nothing to do with it.”
“That is just the way I feel. I only wanted to see what you would say.”
“My idea is just this,” said Charlie. “If we conclude to build her, go to work and set her up, pay our bills as we go along, and before the money quite runs out, stop and earn more. I’m one of those chaps that want to know just how I stand every Saturday night.” ”

“ While Uncle Isaac was at work on the stools, Charlie, Joe, and John were splitting out boards to make a table.
“The first stormy day that comes,” said Uncle Isaac, “I’ll make some bark dishes, and the rest of you can make some spoons, and we’ll have some shelves; it’s just as well to be comfortable. There’s just one thing we do want desperately; that is, a fireplace, to keep the fire from spreading all over the camp, taking up so much room, and also a chimney, instead of a hole in the roof.” ”

“ Where would you build her?”
“At my shore,” said Charlie. “The timber is at the water’s edge. Never was a better place to set a vessel.”
“But there’s no house where you could live.”
“Build a log house,” said Fred.
“Ten men would build her,” said Charlie, “especially such men as Joe Griffin, Peterson, and Yelf. Peterson can use a broadaxe or whip-saw as well as a calking-iron. Uncle Isaac would work after haying, and Black Luce could cook for us.”
“What would you do for a blacksmith’s shop?”
“Build a log one,” said John, “and burn our own coal.” ”

“ I shall glory in it, and an old lady’s blessing shall go with it. They’re good boys; they have begun right; they’ve sought the Lord in their youthful days, and to whatever they set their hands they’ll prosper.”
“We’ve got the sails under way,” said Charlie, “and got our iron: we shall want a good deal of tar, for she must have a brimstone bottom, or the worms will eat her all up in two months at the West Indies.”
“We can make that,” said John.
“Make tar?”
“Yes, indeed: cut down pine trees, take the limbs where we have cut timber and knees, and make a tar-pit. ”

“ Then they are such comical critters! Why, you can learn a bear anything. When I was a boy, I used to have a cub ’most every winter; and when, by the next fall, they began to be troublesome, and father would shoot them, I cried as if my heart would break.
“There was one,” said he, stirred by the recollections of his youth, unclasping his hands, rising up, turning round, then sitting down again, “that I loved better than all the rest. I used to call him Cæsar, after an old black slave who belonged to one of our neighbors. ”

“ There’s a vast deal to be saved in a vessel if you don’t stand for looks, especially if you have time, and the vessel will answer the purpose just as well. If a man contracts to build a vessel for so much a ton, in so many days, he has got to work right through, short days as well as long, perhaps in bitter cold weather, when it will take a man one quarter of the time to thrash his hands, and another quarter to stamp his feet, and very often the timber has to be dug out of the snow; then, if iron, wages, or pitch goes up, he must pay the price ”

“ You see, a beaver in the winter is as fat as a hog, and the fat lies on the outside; you want the skin, just as you do the rind of pork; so, if you can afford to singe the fur all off, and lose that, he will be just like a scalded hog. ”

“ The news won’t be long getting back to your place. They’ll miss you at musters and raisings, and begin to inquire, ‘Where’s Ricker? We want him to take hold of this man that’s throwing everybody.’ The answer will come back, ‘Ricker’s given up drinking and wrestling, and is at work on Elm Island, having the best of wages. People there think everything of him, and won’t let him go. He’s going to buy a farm, and live among them.’ Take my word for it, the young woman will be the first one to hear of it; and in time matters will right themselves. ”

“ Joe tied his legs together with the cod-line, and finding a dead spruce, they broke it down, and thrust it between his legs; Joe taking one end on his shoulders and the boys the other, they carried the carcass to the shore.
“This is a big one,” said Joe, drawing a long breath: “he weighs every bit of three hundred. Well, I’ve kept him well; he’s had all the corn he’s wanted, and the best of corn too; and there’s been any quantity of blueberries this year. Now let us take a drink at Cross-root Spring, leave our guns here, go home and get supper, then take the boat, come up and get the bear.” ”

“ Ben’s house now very much resembled a bee-hive, both as to the number of its inhabitants and their industry. There was no ten-hour system then. It was, begin with the sun and work as long as you can see to pick up your tools. But on the other hand, as the men were not so particular as at the present day, to work just so long to a minute, insomuch that, if the axe is uplifted, and the clock strikes six, they won’t let it fall, so neither was the employer. The master workman was not always on the watch to see if a man stopped to rest his back or light his pipe ”

“ There’s not a smarter, better-hearted fellow in this place, nor a man of better judgment. He showed a good deal more sense than our Ben, who, folks think, is all sense.”
“How, father?”
“Why, Ben built his house, and then set his fire, and liked to have burned up his house, baby, and all the lumber that went into his vessel, and did scorch his wife; but this harum-scarum fellow burnt his land over first, and put something in the ground to live on.”
“They say,” said Mrs. Rhines, “that they are the most affectionate pair that ever was. Joe thinks there is not her equal in the world.” ”

“ Charlie now took the moulds and moulded his scattering frames, and fastened them, together with the floor timbers, to the keel. These frames, extending from the keel to the deck, and ranged along at intervals from stem to stern, kept in position by spruce poles spiked to them and to the stern and transom, and also to cross pawls at their tops, gave the outline of the whole vessel. In the modern process of working, the timber, being all accurately moulded from the draught, the timbering out is a very rapid process—the planking, fastening, and finishing occupying a much greater length of time. ”

“ Uncle Isaac said they would, but I didn’t believe it. It’s all the better; they will breed, and fill the island full in a few years, and get their own living. Charlie will be glad of it, for he will have them to shoot.”
“But won’t they fly away?”
“No; it’s too far from the main land. They can’t fly but a little way before they have to light. Thus we shall have coons, partridges, and gray squirrels grow at our own door.”
“How nice it will be for Charlie to have all these things right on the island! He loves dearly, after supper, when he has done a good day’s work, to go shooting. ”

“ Rhines,” said Fred, “isn’t she a monster?”
“No, Fred, not one whit too large to carry lumber or molasses; she won’t be as big as the Ark; and the English mast and timber ships that come to Wiscasset and Portsmouth, are seven hundred tons and rising.”
“Isn’t she large for a sloop, sir?”
“Yes, but, as Isaac says, it will cost less to rig her, take less men to handle her, and if you find 137 she don’t work well, you can stick another mast in her any time. Boys, let me plan a little for you; build her here, Charlie.” ”

“ I found you drunk in my birch, and it is well known that these are your customary habits. You are also a pauper. All property, everything that goes to support life, in these parts, of any amount, comes by the hard work of somebody,—either bone labor or brain labor,—the labor of those who now possess it, or of those from whom they inherited it. ”

“ BREAKING CAMP.
“There are just two things,” said Uncle Isaac, “for us to make up our minds about. We’ve had great luck. We’ve got two silver-gray foxes, which is an uncommon thing. I lay it to the honey that I fried the bait in, the bloody neck of a moose that I dragged along the trail, and the earth I got from Joe Bradish’s fox-pen. We’ve taken a great many beavers, coons, minks, and otters, and the fur is all prime, for we didn’t begin till the fur was good. ”