This, However, They Owned, Did Not Take Up All Their Time.

Working on favorable wood on favorable days they could each earn two dollars a day; but these favorable circumstances did not come together very often.

They did not deal with the boats themselves, and the profits were eaten up by the middleman. He, the middleman, had a good thing of it, because he could cheat the captains of the boats in the measurement of the wood. The chopper was obliged to supply a genuine cord of logs - true measure. But the man who took it off in the barge to the steamer could so pack it that fifteen true cords would make twenty-two false cords. "It cuts up into a fine trade, you see, sir," said the young man, as he stroked back the little girl's hair from her forehead. "But the captains of course must find it out," said I. This he acknowledged, but argued that the captains on this account insisted on buying the wood so much cheaper, and that the loss all came upon the chopper. I tried to teach him that the remedy lay in his own hands, and the three men listened to me quite patiently while I explained to them how they should carry on their own trade. But the young father had the last word. "I guess we don't get above the fifty cents a day any way." He knew at least where the shoe pinched him. He was a handsome, manly, noble- looking fellow, tall and thin, with black hair and bright eyes. But he had the hollow look about his jaws, and so had his wife, and so had his brother. They all owned to fever and ague. They had a touch of it most years, and sometimes pretty sharply. "It was a coarse place to live in," the old woman said, "but there was no one to meddle with them, and she guessed that it suited." They had books and newspapers, tidy delf, and clean glass upon their shelves, and undoubtedly provisions in plenty. Whether fever and ague yearly, and cords of wood stretched from fifteen to twenty-two are more than a set-off for these good things, I will leave every one to decide according to his own taste.

In another cabin I found women and children only, and one of the children was in the last stage of illness. But nevertheless the woman of the house seemed glad to see me, and talked cheerfully as long as I would remain. She inquired what had happened to the vessel, but it had never occurred to her to go out and see. Her cabin was neat and well furnished, and there also I saw newspapers and Harper's everlasting magazine. She said it was a coarse, desolate place for living, but that she could raise almost anything in her garden.

I could not then understand, nor can I now understand, why none of the numerous passengers out of the boat should have entered those cabins except myself, and why the inmates of the cabins should not have come out to speak to any one.

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