cottages. One fancies that, had it been summer, Israel would have
travelled with a wheelbarrow, and so trundled his wares through the
primeval forests, with the same indifference as porters roll their
barrows over the flagging of streets. In this way was bred that fearless
self-reliance and independence which conducted our forefathers to
national freedom.

This Canadian trip proved highly successful. Selling his glittering
goods at a great advance, he received in exchange valuable peltries and
furs at a corresponding reduction. Returning to Charlestown, he disposed
of his return cargo again at a very fine profit. And now, with a light
heart and a heavy purse, he resolved to visit his sweetheart and
parents, of whom, for three years, he had had no tidings.

They were not less astonished than delighted at his reappearance; he had
been numbered with the dead. But his love still seemed strangely coy;
willing, but yet somehow mysteriously withheld. The old intrigues were
still on foot. Israel soon discovered, that though rejoiced to welcome
the return of the prodigal son--so some called him--his father still
remained inflexibly determined against the match, and still inexplicably
countermined his wooing. With a dolorous heart he mildly yielded to what
seemed his fatality; and more intrepid in facing peril for himself, than
in endangering others by maintaining his rights (for he was now
one-and-twenty), resolved once more to retreat, and quit his blue hills
for the bluer billows.

A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded
misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous
distressed. The ocean brims with natural griefs and tragedies; and into
that watery immensity of terror, man's private grief is lost like a