This was the life the hero of this story began. It might be said to be
an unromantic life; yet such a life was known to many of our American
ancestors. It had its pleasures as well as its pains. It had its poetry
as well as its prose, and its joys as well as its sorrows. The vastness
of the forest and depths of the solitude by which he was surrounded,
made its impress on his mind. He grew up in ignorance of tyranny and
many of the evils of the great cities.
The cabin home and the narrow clearing about it formed his playground.
His first toy was a half-bushel measure, which he called his "bushee!"
This he rolled before him around the log cabin and the paths made in the
tall grass, frequently to the dread of his mother, who feared that he
might encounter some of the deadly serpents with which the forest
abounded. He remembered on one occasion, when his mother found him going
too far, she called:
"Come back, Fernando; mother is afraid you will step on a snake."
He looked about him with the confidence of childhood, and answered:
"No 'nakes here."
Just at that moment, the mother, to her horror, saw a deadly reptile
coiled in the very path along which the child was rolling his "bushee,"
and with true frontier woman's pluck, ran and snatched up the
bare-footed Fernando, when only within two feet of the deadly serpent,
carried him to the house, and with the stout staff assailed and killed
the rattlesnake.
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