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HOSPITALITY IN THE WOODS. 



Hospitality is a virtvie, the exercise of which, although always agree- 

 able to the stranger, is not always duly appreciated. The traveller who 

 has acquired celebrity, is not unfrequently received with a species of hos- 

 pitahty, which is so much alloyed by the obvious attention of the host to 

 his own interest, that the favour conferred upon the stranger must have 

 less weight, when it comes mingled with almost interminable questions as 

 to his perilous adventures. Another receives hospitaUty at the hands of 

 persons", who, possessed of all the comforts of Ufe, receive the way-worn 

 wanderer with pomposity, lead him from one part of their spacious man- 

 sion to another, and bidding him good night, leave him to amuse himself 

 in his solitary apartment, because he is thought unfit to be presented to 

 a party oi friends. A tliird stumbles on a congenial spirit, who receives 

 him with open arms, offers him servants, horses, perhaps even his purse, 

 to enable him to pursue his journey, and parts from him with regret. In 

 all these cases, the traveller feels more or less under obhgation, and is ac- 

 cordingly grateful. But, kind reader, the hospitahty received from the 

 inhabitant of the forest, who can offer only the shelter of his humble roof, 

 and the refreshment of his homely fare, remains more deeply impressed 

 on the memory of the bewildered traveller than any other. This kind of 

 hospitality I have myself frequently experienced in our woods, and now 

 proceed to relate an instance of it. 



I had walked several hundred miles, accompanied by my son, then a 

 stripling, and, coming upon a clear stream, observed a house on the oppo- 

 site shore. We crossed in a canoe, and finding that we had arrived at a 

 tavern, determined upon spending the night there. As we were both 

 greatly fatigued, I made an arrangement with our host to be conveyed in 

 a light Jersey waggon a distance of a hundred miles, the period of our 

 departure to be determined by the rising of the moon. Fair Cynthia, 

 with her shorn beams, peeped over the forest about two hours before 

 dawn, and our conductor, provided with a long twig of hickory, took his 

 station in the fore-part of the waggon. Off we went at a round trot, 

 dancing in the cart like pease in a sieve. The road, which was just wide 

 enough to allow vis to pass, was full of deep ruts, and covered here and 

 there with trunks and stumps, over all which we were hurried. Our con- 



