WILLIAM COBBETT. 87 



easy and happy farmer is surrounded ; and I found still some- 

 thing besides all these — something that was destined to give me 

 a great deal of pleasure and also a great deal of pain, both in 

 their extreme degree, and both of which, in spite of the lapse of 

 forty years, now make an attempt to rush back into my heart. 



' Partly from misinformation, and partly from miscalculation, 

 I had lost my way ; and, quite alone, but armed wuth my 

 sword and a brace of pistols, to defend myself against the 

 bears, I arrived at the log-house in the middle of a moonlight 

 night, the hoar-frost covering the trees and the grass. A stout 

 and clamorous dog, kept off by the gleaming of my sword, 

 waked the master of the house, who got up, received me with 

 great hospitality, got me something to eat, and put me into 

 a feather bed, a thing that I had been a stranger to for some 

 years. I, being very tired, had tried to pass the night in the 

 woodsj between the trunks of two large trees which had fallen 

 side by side, and within a yard of each other. I had made a 

 nest for myself of dry fern, and had made a covering by 

 laying boughs of spruce across the trunks of the trees. But, 

 unable to sleep on account of the cold, becoming sick from 

 the great quantity of water that I had drunk during the heat 

 of the day, and being, moreover, alarmed at the noise of the 

 bears, and lest one of them should find me in a defenceless 

 state, I had roused myself up and had crept along as well as 

 I could ; so that no hero of eastern romance ever experienced 

 a more enchanting change. 



* I had got into the house of one of those Yankee loyalists, 

 who, at the close of the revolutionary war (which, until it had 

 succeeded, was called a rebellion), had accepted of grants of 

 land in the king's province of New Brunswick, and who, to 

 the great honour of England, had been furnished with all the 



