Beneath His Axe, The Forest Yields
Its Thorny Maze To Fertile Fields;
This Goodly Breadth Of Well-Till'd Land,
Well-Purchased By His Own Right Hand,
With Conscience Clear, He Can Bequeath
His Children, When He Sleeps In Death.
CHAPTER VII
UNCLE JOE AND HIS FAMILY
"Ay, your rogue is a laughing rogue, and not a whit the less
dangerous for the smile on his lip, which comes not from an
honest heart, which reflects the light of the soul through
the eye. All is hollow and dark within; and the contortion
of the lip, like the phosophoric glow upon decayed timber,
only serves to point out the rotteness within."
Uncle Joe! I see him now before me, with his jolly red face,
twinkling black eyes, and rubicund nose. No thin, weasel-faced
Yankee was he, looking as if he had lived upon 'cute ideas and
speculations all his life; yet Yankee he was by birth, ay, and in
mind, too; for a more knowing fellow at a bargain never crossed the
lakes to abuse British institutions and locate himself comfortably
among despised Britishers. But, then, he had such a good-natured,
fat face, such a mischievous, mirth-loving smile, and such a merry,
roguish expression in those small, jet-black, glittering eyes, that
you suffered yourself to be taken in by him, without offering the
least resistance to his impositions.
Uncle Joe's father had been a New England loyalist, and his doubtful
attachment to the British government had been repaid by a grant of
land in the township of H - -. He was the first settler in that
township, and chose his location in a remote spot, for the sake of a
beautiful natural spring, which bubbled up in a small stone basin in
the green bank at the back of the house.
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