his way into the settlement; an occurrence, at the time we write, of
very occasional character. To each of the four vast walls of the jail,
in a taste certainly not bad, if we consider the design and character of
the fabric, but a single window was allotted--that too of the very
smallest description for human uses, and crossed at right angles with
rude and slender bars of iron, the choicest specimens of workmanship
from the neighboring smithy. The distance between each of these four
equally important buildings was by no means inconsiderable, if we are
required to make the scale for our estimate, that of the cramped and
diminished limits accorded to like places in the cities, where men and
women appear to increase in due proportion as the field lessens upon
which they must encounter in the great struggle for existence. Though
neighbors in every substantial respect, the four fabrics were most
uncharitably remote, and stood frowning gloomily at one
another--scarcely relieved of the cheerless and sombre character of
their rough outsides, even when thus brightly illuminated by the glare
thrown upon them by the several blazes, flashing out upon the scene from
the twin lamps in front of the tavern, through whose wide and unsashed
windows an additional lustre, as of many lights, gave warm indications
of life and good lodgings within. At a point equidistant from, and
forming one of the angles of the same square with each of these, the
broader glare from the smith's furnace streamed in bright lines across
the plain between, pouring through the unclayed logs of the hovel, in
which, at his craft, the industrious proprietor was even then busily
employed. Occasionally, the sharp click of his hammer, ringing upon and
resounding from the anvil, and a full blast from the capacious bellows,
indicated the busy animation, if not the sweet concert, the habitual
cheerfulness and charm, of a more civilized and better regulated
society.