“Jeames, my laddie, fear God, you may be tempted to think trying to do right has in the past brought you nothing but unhappiness, that you have only been scorned and flouted because you would not take His name in vain. But those bitter days will never come back. His providence has brought you to us, and should you live as long as I have, you will never regret having put your trust in Him!”
No force of learning, eloquence, or wit, could have produced so genial and abiding an impression upon James, as the words we have recorded. The character and person of the speaker himself—the very situation, beside a forest fire—all tended to heighten both the moral and physical effect of the sentiments uttered.
The elder Whitman possessed indeed a most commanding presence. His great bones and sinews, now that the body was attenuated by age, stood out in such bold relief as to challenge attention; showing the vast strength he once possessed, and that still lingered in those massive limbs, while the burden of years had neither bowed his frame, nor had age dimmed the fire of his eye.
In addition to all this, the accounts James had heard from Bertie of his encounters with the red men, and with bears, and wolves, together with the scars of wounds that he had upon his person, supplemented by the respect and affection with which he was treated by the whole household, caused James to look upon and listen to him with awe and wonder.
He could understand the plain and terse utterances of the old woodsman, and they gave a new and strong impulse to ideas and trains of thought that were now germinating within him.
The next morning, as Mr. Whitman wanted the four horses to haul wheat, he told Bertie they must take the oxen and cart with them, and bring home a load of wood both at noon and night. He also told his father that he had better not go, that two days’ work in succession and the travel back and forth were too much for him. The old gentleman, however, said it was not, he could ride in the cart; and that as they were now to cut larger trees, it was not safe to leave the boys to fell them alone.
James had never seen an ox in the yoke, and he was much surprised to see with what docility the near ox came across the yard to come under the yoke, when Bertie held up the end of it and said,—