The Deserted Cabin 
would think of these bushes as beautiful; but let the sun 
shine upon the brown billows and they are transformed in 
a twinkling to such a glory of warm, vivid auburn as 
fairly takes my breath away, and humbles me by a revela¬ 
tion of beauty that seems let down from heaven. 
After walking for miles in these piney stretches and 
seeing no sign of man I come upon a weed-grown clearing, 
where, amid brambles and scrubby sassafras and suckering 
white poplars, a deserted cabin stands—the home afore¬ 
time of human beings who sought there to wrest a living 
from the sand. The roof sags in, bowed by the burden of 
many a winter’s snows; the floor is crazy and rotting; 
where windows once were are now but gaping sockets. Is 
this the forgotten grave of some family’s buried hope, or 
is it an abandoned stepping-stone to better things? 
Standing in the crumbling doorway I note amid the 
desolation two simple things that touch within me a tender 
chord. One is a corner cupboard, its broken door reveal¬ 
ing a cozy top shelf that surely lodged that solacer of 
housewifely care, a tea pot. Daily for how many hum¬ 
drum years has it not come down from that top shelf on 
its kindly mission to tired femininity! And the other is 
a blackened hearth, where fire once blazed. There the 
kettle must have sung, and of a cold night weary feet 
were stretched out to gather warmth and comfort; by its 
fitful gleam perhaps some Hampden of the pines or mute, 
inglorious Milton may have conned his humanities. So in 
the depth of the wildwood is a tongue to speak of home to 
the traveler and keep his heart warm. 
[125] 
