Rose’s beaux wouldn’t hev to do their courtin’ with carpenters’ tools.”

“It’s the pigpen an’ the hencoop you want to keep your eye on, mother, not the motives of them as made ’em. It’s turrible onsettlin’ to inspeck folks’ motives too turrible close.”

“Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he says,” interposed Rose, to change the subject; “but I tell him that a horse doesn’t revolve under you, and go sideways at the same time that it is going forwards.”[Pg 26]

[Pg 26]

“Log-ridin’ ain’t no trick at all to a man of sperit,” said Mr. Wiley. “There’s a few places in the Kennebec where the water’s too shaller to let the logs float, so we used to build a flume, an’ the logs would whiz down like arrers shot from a bow. The boys used to collect by the side o’ that there flume to see me ride a log down, an’ I’ve watched ’em drop in a dead faint when I spun by the crowd; but land! you can’t drownd some folks, not without you tie nail-kags to their head an’ feet an’ drop ’em in the falls; I ’ve rid logs down the b’ilin’est rapids o’ the Kennebec an’ never lost my head. I remember well the year o’ the gre’t freshet, I rid a log from”—

“There, there, father, that’ll do,” said Mrs. Wiley, decisively. “I’ll put the cream in the churn, an’ you jest work off some o’ your steam by bringin’ the butter for us afore you start for the bridge. It don’t do no good to brag afore your own women-folks; work goes consid’able better’n stories[Pg 27] at every place ’cept the loafers’ bench at the tavern.”

[Pg 27]

And the baffled raconteur, who had never done a piece of work cheerfully in his life, dragged himself reluctantly to the shed, where, before long, one could hear him moving the dasher up and down sedately to his favorite “churning tune” of—

 Broad is the road that leads to death, And thousands walk together there; But Wisdom shows a narrow path, With here and there a traveler. 

And thousands walk together there;

With here and there a traveler.

[Pg 28]

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