Ah! never did I feel more acutely the truth of the proverb, "Those
that go a-borrowing go a-sorrowing," than I did that night. My poor
boy awoke ill and feverish, and I had no light to assist him, or
even to look into his sweet face, to see how far I dared hope that
the light of day would find him better.
OH CANADA! THY GLOOMY WOODS
A song
Oh Canada! thy gloomy woods
Will never cheer the heart;
The murmur of thy mighty floods
But cause fresh tears to start
From those whose fondest wishes rest
Beyond the distant main;
Who, 'mid the forests of the West,
Sigh for their homes again.
I, too, have felt the chilling blight
Their shadows cast on me,
My thought by day - my dream by night -
Was of my own country.
But independent souls will brave
All hardships to be free;
No more I weep to cross the wave,
My native land to see.
But ever as a thought most bless'd,
Her distant shores will rise,
In all their spring-tide beauty dress'd.
To cheer my mental eyes.
And treasured in my inmost heart,
The friends I left behind;
But reason's voice, that bade us part,
Now bids me be resign'd.
I see my children round me play,
My husband's smiles approve;
I dash regretful tears away,
And lift my thoughts above:
In humble gratitude to bless
The Almighty hand that spread
Our table in the wilderness,
And gave my infants bread.
CHAPTER VI
OLD SATAN AND TOM WILSON'S NOSE
"A nose, kind sir! Sure mother Nature,
With all her freaks, ne'er formed this feature.
If such were mine, I'd try and trade it,
And swear the gods had never made it."
After reducing the log cabin into some sort of order, we contrived,
with the aid of a few boards, to make a bed-closet for poor Tom
Wilson, who continued to shake every day with the pitiless ague.
There was no way of admitting light and air into this domicile,
which opened into the general apartment, but through a square hole
cut in one of the planks, just wide enough to admit a man's head
through the aperture. Here we made Tom a comfortable bed on the
floor, and did the best we could to nurse him through his sickness.
His long, thin face, emaciated with disease, and surrounded by huge
black whiskers, and a beard of a week's growth, looked perfectly
unearthly. He had only to stare at the baby to frighten her almost
out of her wits.
"How fond that young one is of me," he would say; "she cries for joy
at the sight of me."
Among his curiosities, and he had many, he held in great esteem a
huge nose, made hollow to fit his face, which his father, a being
almost as eccentric as himself, had carved out of boxwood. When he
slipped this nose over his own (which was no beautiful classical
specimen of a nasal organ), it made a most perfect and hideous
disguise. The mother who bore him never would have recognised her
accomplished son.
Numberless were the tricks he played off with this nose. Once he
walked through the streets of - -, with this proboscis attached to
his face. "What a nose! Look at the man with the nose!" cried all
the boys in the street. A party of Irish emigrants passed at the
moment. The men, with the courtesy natural to their nation, forbore
to laugh in the gentleman's face; but after they had passed, Tom
looked back, and saw them bent half double in convulsions of mirth.
Tom made the party a low bow, gravely took off his nose, and put it
in his pocket.
The day after this frolic, he had a very severe fit of the ague, and
looked so ill that I really entertained fears for his life. The hot
fit had just left him, and he lay upon his bed bedewed with a cold
perspiration, in a state of complete exhaustion.
"Poor Tom," said I, "he has passed a horrible day, but the worst
is over, and I will make him a cup of coffee." While preparing it,
Old Satan came in and began to talk to my husband. He happened to
sit directly opposite the aperture which gave light and air to
Tom's berth. This man was disgustingly ugly. He had lost one eye
in a quarrel. It had been gouged out in the barbarous conflict,
and the side of his face presented a succession of horrible scars
inflicted by the teeth of his savage adversary. The nickname he had
acquired through the country sufficiently testified to the
respectability of his character, and dreadful tales were told of
him in the neighbourhood, where he was alike feared and hated.
The rude fellow, with his accustomed insolence, began abusing the
old country folks.
The English were great bullies, he said; they thought no one could
fight but themselves; but the Yankees had whipped them, and would
whip them again. He was not afear'd of them, he never was afear'd
in his life.
Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when a horrible apparition
presented itself to his view. Slowly rising from his bed, and
putting on the fictitious nose, while he drew his white nightcap
over his ghastly and livid brow, Tom thrust his face through the
aperture, and uttered a diabolical cry; then sank down upon his
unseen couch as noiselessly as he had arisen. The cry was like
nothing human, and it was echoed by an involuntary scream from the
lips of our maid-servant and myself.
"Good God! what's that?" cried Satan, falling back in his chair, and
pointing to the vacant aperture.
