PART III.] MORRIS BIRKBECK, ESQ. 571 



in their 50 dollar den? Suppose one or more 

 of them sick! How are the rest to sleep by 

 night or to eat by day? 



1025. However, here they are, in this miserable 

 place, with the ship-bedding, and without evert 

 a bedstead, and with 130 dollars gone in land 

 and h ou se. Two horses and harness and plough 

 are to cost 100 dollars! These, like the hinges 

 of the door, are all to be of wood I suppose ; 

 for as to flesh and blood and bones in the form 

 of two hdrses for 100 dollars is impossible, to 

 say nothing about the plough and harness, 

 which would cost 20 dollars of the money. 

 Perhaps, however, you may mean some of those 

 horses, ploughs and sets of harness, which, at 

 the time when you wrote this letter, you had 

 all ready waiting for the spring to put in your 

 hundred acres of corn that was never put in at 

 all! However, let this pass too. Then there 

 are 220 dollars left, and these are to provide 

 cows, hogs, seed, corn, fencing, and other esc- 

 pences. Next come two cows (poor ones) 24 

 dollars ; hogs, 15 dollars ; seed corn, 5 dollars ; 

 fencing, suppose 20 acres only, in four plots, the 

 stuff brought from the woods nearest adjoining, 

 Here are 360 rods of fencing, and, if it be done so 

 as to keep out a pig, and to keep in a pig, or a- 

 horse or cow, for less than half a dollar a rod, I 

 will suffer myself to be made into smoked meat m 



2 s 



