"
"Hoity, toity, girl! who has reared you up as a judge over your
elders, ay, and your betters, too! I should like to see the man on the
whole frontier, who sets a more honest example to his children than
this same Ishmael Bush! Show me, if you can, Miss Fault-finder, but
not fault-mender, a set of boys who will, on occasion, sooner chop a
piece of logging and dress it for the crop, than my own children;
though I say it myself, who, perhaps, should be silent; or a cradler
that knows better how to lead a gang of hands through a field of
wheat, leaving a cleaner stubble in his track, than my own good man!
Then, as a father, he is as generous as a lord; for his sons have only
to name the spot where they would like to pitch, and he gives 'em a
deed of the plantation, and no charge for papers is ever made!"
As the wife of the squatter concluded, she raised a hollow, taunting
laugh, that was echoed from the mouths of several juvenile imitators,
whom she was training to a life as shiftless and lawless as her own;
but which, notwithstanding its uncertainty, was not without its secret
charms.
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