SOLON ROBINSON, 1841 159 



How much better to make a small beginning. To be 

 sure and make the cabin as comfortable as possible, for 

 at the best, it is to a family that have never been used to 

 the like, but a temporary convenience, generally occupied 

 more through necessity than choice. Not but that a log 

 house can be made most completely comfortably, and I 

 have often seen those of a very rough exterior, which 

 showed the highest degree of neatness within. But there 

 is such an anxiety among many emigrants to get a large 

 farm, that the dwelling is neglected. This is all wrong; 

 it is much better to have a "little land well tilled," and 

 a house, if not "well filled" inside, at least have all the 

 cracks in the outside well filled, if you expect to keep the 

 wife, 'well willed." Many an ague fit is brought upon the 

 new settler by the unusual exposure to which they sub- 

 ject themselves in an unfinished log cabin, with all the 

 cracks open, perhaps without door or window, and but 

 half a chimney, and sometimes without floor or fire-place. 

 Such a change from all former usage cannot be submit- 

 ted to with impunity, although in the summer time, and 

 though it be merely for that indefinite period, " 'til I get 

 over my hurry." The fact is that an industrious man 

 upon a new place, where everything is to be created by 

 the work of his own hands before it can be called a 

 farm, is never over his hurry. And I am sure that I 

 shall have all the female part of my emigrating friends 

 upon my side, when I insist that it should always be the 

 first thing to do, as I am sure it is the first duty of the 

 emigrant, to make the dwelling house as comfortable as 

 the circumstances will possibly admit. If a man will 

 expose his own health, he is bound by the strongest ties 

 to protect that of his wife and children at all times, and 

 doubly so, when he has brought them away from the 

 thousand comforts that they have been reared to, "to 

 begin a new home in the wilderness." And although the 

 new settler's log cabin is necessarily a rough uncouth 

 looking dwelling, it can with a very small amount of 

 labor, be made tight, warm, comfortable and pleasant. 



