" Amid its close-crowding thickets night came
upon us speedily. How hospitably we were received in the bare new
"homestead" of Parson H----; how generously our hosts relinquished
their one "barred" bed and passed a night of horror exposed to the fury
of myriad mosquitos, whose songs of triumph we heard from our own
protected pillows; how basely Barney requited all this kindness by
breaking into the corn-crib and "stuffing himself as full as a
sausage," as the Small Boy reported,--may not here be dwelt upon.
The early morning was exquisite. Soft mists veiled all the glorious
colors; great spider-webs, strung thick with diamonds, stretched from
tree to tree; a little "pot-hole" pond of lilies exhaled sweet odors;
the lark's ecstatic song thrilled down from upper air. There was a
gentle hill before us, and halfway up a view to the right of a broad
lake, with the log huts of a "settle_ment_" on the high bank. The sun
has drunk up all the mists, and shines bright upon the soft gray satin
of the girdled pine trees in the clearing; flowers are crowding
everywhere--orange milkweed, purple phlox, creamy pawpaw, azure
bluebells, spotted foxgloves, rose-tinted daisies, brown-eyed
coreopsias and unknown flowers of palest blue.
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