Cabin

“ At the bottom of this chasm, so far below my feet that I was giddy to look down, a small circular lake was visible, like the eye of a fiend. On the shore of it, near a cliff overhanging the water, stood a cabin, from the stone-weighted roof of which rose a thin column of blue smoke. About the cabin, in the narrow and sterile pasture, a few cows and sheep were grazing. What a dreadful place for a human habitation! ”

“ The log cabin, on the top of which a room with a steep, ornamental Swiss roof has been built, is in a valley close to a clear, rushing river, which emerges a little higher up from an inaccessible chasm of great sublimity. One side of the valley is formed by cliffs and terraces of porphyry as red as the reddest new brick, and at sunset blazing into vermilion. ”

“ How peaceful the whole scene in every direction, how sacredly at rest! And the cabin up there at the end of the garden where they were sleeping side by side—how the moon poured its strongest light upon that: his eye could never get away from it. So closely a man might live with a woman in this seclusion! So entirely she must be his!
His passions leaped like dogs against their chains when brought too near. They began to draw him toward the cabin until at last he had come opposite to it, his figure remaining hidden behind the fence and under the heavy shadow of a group of the wilderness trees. ”

“ My imagination gave piratical significance to the sighing of the pine trees and the scampering of the pack rats over my roof.
Yes, my dream cabin was come true. There it stood on its lofty vantage, watching over me as I fared forth on my explorations, waiting faithfully for my return, never reproaching me for my absence, its snug walls always ready to welcome me like sheltering arms, its quickly blazing hearth cheering me like a warm, loving heart. ”

“ Stretched upon a couch of skins, she is fading like the yellow and falling leaves that the forest is showering upon the roof, and the morning breeze is gathering in little heaps around the threshold of the rude cabin. ”

“ The cabin and the barn were hedged about with shining thickets of sunflower, florid hollyhocks, and scarlet-runner beans. It gave the young woodman a kind of pang,—this bit of homely sweetness projected, as it were, upon the infinite solitude of the universe. ”

“ I am not inspired by that brotherhood which does not overflow with love into the being of the elements, not hail in them the same spirit as that which calls us with so many pathetic and loving voices from the lives of men. So I build my dream cabin in hope of its wider intimacy:
A cabin on the mountain side hid in a grassy nook, With door and windows open wide, where friendly stars may look; The rabbit shy can patter in; the winds may enter free Who throng around the mountain throne in living ecstasy. ”

“ Sue Winn and Josh Bell were happily wed;
And the cowslips that bloomed in the side of the glen
Were fragrant as roses in the gardens of men.
Their home was a cabin, the mountain above
Was rugged and rough, and their fortune was love:
But a cabin with love and vigor and health
Is better than sin and a palace of wealth. ”

“ A cabin! A lake!” Mary exclaimed. “How beautiful!”
It was indeed beautiful. True, the clearing showed signs of neglect, young trees had sprouted where a field had been, the door of the cabin, standing ajar, seemed to say, “Nobody’s home. Nobody’s been home for many a day.” For all that, the gray cabin, built of great, seasoned logs, the clearing sloping down to a small, deep lake, where a flock of wild ducks swam all unafraid, made a picture one would not soon forget.
“Come,” said the Indian girl. A moment later they stepped in awed silence across the threshold of the cabin. ”

“ In writing this work, I have, with peculiar interest, lived over the scenes and incidents of my varied frontier experience; have travelled once more amid the waving grasses and beckoning flowers; heard again the bark of the wolf, and the voices of birds; felt on my brow the kiss of the health-giving breeze; worshipped anew in the log-cabin sanctuary. Yes, East and West are both dear to me. One fittingly supplements the other. Each holds the ashes of kindred. ”

“ Every here and there, over the estate, may be seen, rising in humble guise above the shrubbery, the rude chimney of a log cabin, where all the livelong day the plaintive moaning of the spinning wheel rises fitfully upon the breeze, like the fancied notes of a hobgoblin, as they are sometimes imitated in the stories with which we frighten children. ”

“ From the high points of the road, he could look off over valleys to other peaks and see here and there the roof of a cabin with its small patch of corn and its rude out-houses. He passed tilting fields where red and blue calico dresses flashed as entire families worked with hoes, and roadside habitations of logs where raggedy children fled inside to gaze timidly around the corners of door-jambs. ”

“ Another day of wilderness wandering. A cabin sighted, but so far away that it was merely a vague dot upon a distant ridge; miner's shack or sheepman's or wood-cutter's? Housing an occupant or deserted for years? No smoke from the rock chimney; no sign of any human being near it. And all view of it so soon lost!... And, afterward, no other human habitation of any kind; no road man-made; only trees and rocks, gorges and ridges and brush, and a winding way to be chosen between them. With, always, Bruce Standing driving on and on, relentlessly on, ever deeper into the wilderness. ”

“ Before a log cabin, in a sway-sided rocker, creaked a tall, white, flabby woman, once nearly beautiful, now rubbed at the edges. She rose, huddling her wrapper about her bosom, as they drove into the clearing and picked their way through stumps and briars. ”

“ Beyond the garden he came to the empty cabin and the great wood-pile. At this hour it used to be a scene of hilarious activity—the little negroes sitting perched in chattering groups on the topmost logs or playing leap-frog in the dust, while some picked up baskets of chips or dragged a back-log into the cabins.
At last he drew near the wooden stiles and saw the large house of which he was the solitary occupant. What darkened rooms and noiseless halls! What beds, all ready, that nobody now came to sleep in, and cushioned old chairs that nobody rocked! ”

“ At one end of the clearing, so near the forest that the top of a falling tree would have touched it, stood a cabin, individual in its complete darkness except for a dull ruddy glow at one end, where a window extended as high as the eaves. ”

“ The cabin, of course, was the only place for me, the soaked deck with the soaked moss on top of it being quite out of the question; but even the cabin was not fit for a dog to lie in, so chill and damp was it and so foul with the stench rising and spreading from the slime of rotted leather that I had emptied from the coffer and that made a little vile pool upon the floor. ”

“ The thought of that empty little cabin in the wilderness would bring a pang to the girl’s heart, and each evening she would climb the hill at the sunset hour to live over the happy moments with which the spot was associated. ”

“ On this plateau were abundant signs of life. Cattle were grazing about among the trees, chickens were crowing, and in the distance could be heard the sound of a woman’s voice singing. As they pressed forward along the level road they came in sight of a cabin, and the blue smoke curling from its short chimney was suggestive of hospitality. ”

“ Of the mountain cabin sinking in decay,
With its threshold overgrown with vegetation,
With its door unhinged and mouldering away.
There's a weird and most disconsolate expression
In the sashless windows with their vacant stare,
As in mute appeal, or taciturn confession
Of a wild and inconsolable despair.
With its ridgepole bent and broken in the centre,
From its roof of dirt and weight of winter snows;
Where the only voice to greet you as you enter
Is the wind which down the crumbling fireplace blows ”

“ Instead of the narrow, noisy streets and tenanted blocks of the populous eastern city, my eyes rested on one vast green field stretching to the arching horizon, over which brooded a profound silence, intensified by the sacred hush of the Sabbath.
My host offered his own cabin for the forenoon service. His son–a sturdy young man of eighteen, inured to pioneer life–had ridden far and wide to give notice of the meeting, and he was confident of a good attendance. ”

“ Where stood the little vine-wreathed cabin now may be seen a larger and more commodious log structure, which is but a continuation of the original.
A busy scene greets our gaze all around. Men are hurrying here and there through the valley—men not of the pale-face race, but of the red race; men, clad only to the waist, with remarkable muscular developments, and fleetness of foot. ”

“ In trackless woods where men should have been, herds of deer were straying; the sandy hills were alive with conies, the downs with flocks of bustards. The peasant's cabin was made of reeds or sticks plastered over with mud. ”

“ The night after my arrival at the cabin, while suffering the most excruciating agony, and thinking that I had only been saved to die among friends, a loud knock was heard at the cabin door. An old man in mountain costume entered—a hunter, whose life was spent among the mountains. ”

“ Some thirty years ago there came to my cabin a young Englishman, not a hunter or a fisherman, but one who would sit for hours at a time on that old bent tree yonder, and make the strangest and sweetest music I ever heard. ”

“ A log cabin, even,—and I speak of this primitive American structure with profound affection and regard, as the shelter from which we have achieved the most of our prodigious and rapid agricultural conquests,—may be so constructed as to speak an air of neatness, intelligence, and even refinement in those who inhabit it. ”

“ The oldest settlers found that cabin there; and it then appeared in such a dilapidated state as to justify the belief that it had been built many years previous." "Do you know anything about it?" I eagerly asked. "I know all about it," replied the old hunter; "for I assisted in building it, and occupied it for several years, during the trapping season. That cabin," he continued, as a shade passed over his features, "has been the scene of carnage and bloodshed. But why wake up old feelings—let them sleep, let them sleep;" and the veteran drew his brawny hand over his eyes. ”

“ That woodman friend of mine proved so engaging it was difficult to get away, and thus when, dusk upon us, and my object still a long distance off, he asked me to spend the night at his hut, I gladly assented.
We soon reached the cabin where the man lived by himself whilst working in the forest. It was a picturesque little place on a tree-overhung lagoon, thatched, wattled, and all about were piles of a pleasant-scented bark, collected for the purpose of tanning hides, and I could not but marvel that such a familiar process should be practised identically on two sides of the universal ether. ”

“ The cabin was of unbarked maple logs, with four rooms and a rustic portico. Then all the villagers stared in very truth. They, living in their trim and ugly little homes, accounted houses of logs as the misfortune of their pioneer parents. A shed for wood, a barn for the Jersey cow, a rustic fence, tall, with a high swinging gate, completed the domain. In the front room of the cabin was a fireplace of rude brick. In the bedrooms, cots as bare and hard as a nun's, and in the kitchen the domestic necessaries ”

“ In the cabin of the Boat is Ra, dead and lifeless; in the prow are Up-uaut, the Opener of the Ways, and Sa, and the goddess of the hour. Round about the cabin are a company of gods; these are they who guard Ra from all perils and dangers, and from the attack of the abominable Apep. ”

“ It may be the way of the world, but it's no the way with God, Philip. Our cabin is bigger than a sparrow's nest, afther all, and we—even you, miserable sinner, as ye are, 'are of more value than many sparrows.' 'The likes of us,' indade! Have ye ever come yet to sleeping in a stable in Bethlehem, among cows and sheep and asses? ”

“ There, lighted up by the silver moon was the cabin that had offered them sanctuary for a day. Would they ever forget it? How could they?
And who would wish to forget so lovely a picture? Great spruce trees towered toward the sky. Half hidden by the lesser growth of birch and balsam, the cabins stood. There were three in all, yet in this uncertain light they seemed but one.
[134]
“It is one of the loveliest spots on earth!” The girl took one long deep breath that came near being a sob. “It is so beautiful it seems like a dream. Like a southern home beside a river in a moving picture. ”

“ Shutting the door of my cabin, I set off up the glen in the direction of the surgeon's cabin. I had not gone far before I perceived the very man himself. He was walking rapidly along the hillside, beating the furze bushes with a cudgel and bellowing like a madman. ”

“ How you would like the snuggery of the cabin now, and the shelf of a berth that you couldn't turn over in if a heavy fellow happened to be sagging on the shelf above you, and the canal-banks even with the top of your head when you sit down, and the sun about as hot upon the roof as if he had actually taken a deck passage and come bodily aboard, is not a matter of doubt. ”

“ Sometimes I have a vague impression of someone's having climbed to the top of a distant cabin in the gloom of the night, and when this thought comes to me I seem to see a man standing, [Pg 16] in bare feet and scanty clothing, upon the top of that cabin, with the moon trying in vain to secure a good look at him through the thick clouds, and tremble with the fear that he may awaken the sleepers within as he cautiously uplifts their stove-pipe through its hole in the roof. ”