If he should invite one of his town friends up this way,
suggesting moose-meat and unlimited freedom, the latter might pertinently
inquire, "What is that sticking in your nose?" When a generation or two
have used up all the enemies' darts, their successors lead a comparatively
easy life. We owe to our fathers analogous blessings. Many old people
receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a
compensation for having lived a long time ago. No doubt, our town dogs
still talk, in a snuffling way, about the days that tried dogs' noses. How
they got a cat up there I do not know, for they are as shy as my aunt
about entering a canoe. I wondered that she did not run up a tree on the
way; but perhaps she was bewildered by the very crowd of opportunities.
Twenty or thirty lumberers, Yankee and Canadian, were coming and going,--
Aleck among the rest,--and from time to time an Indian touched here. In
the winter there are sometimes a hundred men lodged here at once. The most
interesting piece of news that circulated among them appeared to be, that
four horses belonging to Smith, worth seven hundred dollars, had passed by
further into the woods a week before.
The white-pine-tree was at the bottom or further end of all this. It is a
war against the pines, the only real Aroostook or Penobscot war.
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