competitive than in old settled lands like France and England. Thomas,
in fact; would get boarded for nothing in Michigan, and so would be able
easily to save almost all his high wages for the purpose of building the
frame house.

So James had to take to the farm in summer, while in the winter he began
to work as a sort of amateur carpenter in a small way. As yet he had
lived entirely in the backwoods, and had never seen a town or even a
village; but his education in practical work had begun from his very
babyhood, and he was handy after the usual fashion of American or
colonial boys--ready to turn his hand to anything that happened to
present itself. In new countries, where everybody has not got neighbours
and workmen within call, such rough-and-ready handiness is far more
common than in old England. The one carpenter of the neighbourhood asked
James to help him, on the proud day when Tom brought back his earnings
from Michigan, and set about the building of the frame house, for which
he had already collected the unhewn timber. From that first beginning,
by the time he was thirteen, James was promoted to assist in building a
barn; and he might have taken permanently to a carpenter's life, had it
not been that his boyish passion for reading had inspired him with an
equal passion for going to sea. He had read Marryatt's novels and other
sailor tales--what boy has not?--and he was fired with the usual
childish desire to embark upon that wonderful life of chasing
buccaneers, fighting pirates, capturing prizes, or hunting hidden
treasure, which is a lad's brilliantly coloured fancy picture of an
everyday sailor's wet, cold, cheerless occupation.

At last, when James was about fifteen, his longing for the sea grew so
strong that his mother, by way of a compromise, allowed him to go and
try his luck with the Lake Erie captains at Cleveland. Shipping on the