When Winslow,afterward governor of the Plymouth Colony,went with a companion on a visit of ceremony to Massasoit on foot through the woods,and arrived tired and hungry at his lodge,they were well received by the king,but nothing was said about eating that day.When the night arrived,to quote their own words,-“He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife,they at the one end and we at the other,it being only planks laid a foot from the ground and a thin mat upon them.Two more of his chief men,for want of room,pressed by and upon us;so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.”At one o'clock the next day Massasoit “brought two fishes that he had shot,”about thrice as big as a bream.“These being boiled,there were at least forty looked for a share in them;the most eat of them.This meal only we had in two nights and a day;and had not one of us bought a partridge,we had taken our journey fasting.”Fearing that they would be light-headed for want of food and also sleep,owing to “the savages'barbarous singing,(for they use to sing themselves asleep,)”and that they might get home while they had strength to travel,they departed.As for lodging,it is true they were but poorly entertained,though what they found an inconvenience was no doubt intended for an honor;but as far as eating was concerned,I do not see how the Indians could have done better.They had nothing to eat themselves,and they were wiser than to think that apologies could supply the place of food to their guests;so they drew their belts tighter and said nothing about it.Another time when Winslow visited them,it being a season of plenty with them,there was no deficiency in this respect.
As for men,they will hardly fail one anywhere.I had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period of my life;I mean that I had some.I met several there under more favorable circumstances than I could anywhere else.But fewer came to see me on trivial business.In this respect,my company was winnowed by my mere distance from town.I had withdrawn so far within the great ocean of solitude,into which the rivers of society empty,that for the most part,so far as my needs were concerned,only the finest sediment was deposited around me.Beside,there were wafted to me evidences of unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other side.
Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man,-he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here,-a Canadian,a wood chopper and post-maker,who can hole fifty posts in a day,who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught.He,too,has heard of Homer,and,“if it were not for books,”would “not know what to do rainy days,”though perhaps he has not read one wholly through for many rainy seasons.Some priest who could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to read his verse in the Testament in his native parish far away;and now I must translate to him,while he holds the book,Achilles'reproof to Patroclus for his sad countenance.-“Why are you in tears,Patroclus,like a young girl?”
“Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia?
They say that Menoetius lives yet,son of Actor,
And Peleus lives,son of Aeacus,among the Myrmidons,
Either of whom having died,we should greatly grieve.”
He says,“That's good.”He has a great bundle of white oak bark under his arm for a sick man,gathered this Sunday morning.“I suppose there's no harm in going after such a thing to-day,”says he.To him Homer was a great writer,though what his writing was about he did not know.A more simple and natural man it would be hard to find.Vice and disease,which cast such a sombre moral hue over the world,seemed to have hardly any existance for him.He was about twenty-eight years old,and had left Canada and his father's house a dozen years before to work in the States,and earn money to buy a farm with at last,perhaps in his native country.He was cast in the coarsest mould;a stout but sluggish body,yet gracefully carried,with a thick sunburnt neck,dark bushy hair,and dull sleepy blue eyes,which were occasionally lit up with expression.He wore a flat gray cloth cap,a dingy wool-colored greatcoat,and cowhide boots.He was a great consumer of meat,usually carrying his dinner to his work a couple of miles past my house,-for he chopped all summer,-in a tin pail;cold meats,often cold woodchucks,and coffee in a stone bottle which dangled by a string from his be
<and sometimes he offered me a drink.He came along early,crossing my bean-field,though without anxiety or haste to get to his work,such as Yankees exhibit.He wasn't a-going to hurt himself.He didn't care if he only earned his board.Frequently he would leave his dinner in the bushes,when his dog had caught a woodchuck by the way,and go back a mile and a half to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded,after deliberating first for half an hour whether he could not sink it in the pond safely till nightfall,-loving to dwell long upon these themes.He would say,as he went by in the morning,“How thick the pigeons are!If working every day were not my trade,I could get all the meat I should want by hunting,-pigeons,woodchucks,rabbits,partridges,-by gosh!I could get all I should want for a week in one day.”
He was a skilful chopper,and indulged in some flourishes and ornaments in his art.He cut his trees level and close to the ground,that the sprouts which came up afterward might be more vigorous and a sled might slide over the stumps;and instead of leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood,he would pare it away to a slender stake or splinter which you could break off with your hand at last.
