for lack of better cups, from a large mussel-shell which Catharine had
picked up among the weeds and pebbles on the beach.

Many children would have wandered about weeping and disconsolate,
lamenting their sad fate, or have imbittered the time by useless
repining, or, perhaps, by venting their uneasiness in reviling the
principal author of their calamity--poor, thoughtless Louis; but such
were not the dispositions of our young Canadians. Early accustomed to
the hardships incidental to the lives of the settlers in the bush,
these young people had learned to bear with patience and cheerfulness
privations that would have crushed the spirits of children more
delicately nurtured. They had known every degree of hunger and
nakedness: during the first few years of their lives they had often
been compelled to subsist for days and weeks upon roots and herbs,
wild fruits, and game which their fathers had learned to entrap, to
decoy, and to shoot. Thus Louis and Hector had early been initiated
into the mysteries of the chase. They could make dead-falls, and pits,
and traps, and snares; they were as expert as Indians in the use of
the bow; they could pitch a stone or fling a wooden dart at partridge,
hare, and squirrel with almost unerring aim; and were as swift of foot
as young fawns. Now it was that they learned to value in its fullest
extent this useful and practical knowledge, which enabled them to face
with fortitude the privations of a life so precarious as that to which
they were now exposed.

It was one of the elder Maxwell's maxims,--Never, let difficulties
overcome you, but rather strive to conquer them; let the head direct
the hand, and the hand, like a well-disciplined soldier, obey the head
as chief. When his children expressed any doubts of not being able to
accomplish any work they had begun, he would say, "Have you not hands,