Chapter 54 visitor - 2

When Winslow, later governor of the Plymouth Colony, went with a companion to make an official visit to Massasot, he walked through the woods, and arrived weary and hungry at his hut, where they were received respectfully by the chief.But this day there was no mention of diet.When night came, to use their own words—"He entertained us in his own and his wife's bed, they at one end, and us at the other, a bed of planks a foot from the ground, with only A thin mat was spread out. His two chieftains crowded around us because there was not enough room, so we were not happy with our lodgings, and we were not happy with our journey." At one o'clock the next day, Martha Sauter "took out two fish he had caught," three times the size of a carp; That's all we ate; if one of us hadn't bought a partridge, we'd have been on a hunger strike." Winslow and the others were starved of both food and sleep, because "that savage (they always sang till they fell asleep themselves)', fearing that it might make them faint, they took their leave in order to get home while they still had strength.It is true that they were not well received in lodging, though it was the courtesies that greatly inconvenienced them; and as for the food, the Indians were, I think, the smartest.They had nothing to eat themselves, and they were smart enough to understand that an apology was no substitute for food; so they tightened their belts and said nothing.Winslow visited once afterward, and it happened to be a season when their provisions were plentiful, so there was no want in this respect.

As for people, there are people everywhere.There are more visitors in the wood than at any time in my life; that is to say, I have had some guests.I met some guests there, and it was much better than meeting them on other occasions.But very few people come to me for small things.In this respect, as I live in the country far from the city, my distance alone discriminates them.So deep have I retreated into the sea of ​​solitude; though the rivers of society also flow into this sea, and as far as my needs are concerned, most of the best deposits are gathered around me.And there are many undiscovered and uncivilized continents on the other side, and their evidence also came with the waves.

Was it not a true Homeric or Paphilagonian who came to my house this morning,--he has such a poetic name for his position, I'm sorry I can't write it here, —he was a Canadian, a post-cutter, he could cut holes in fifty posts a day, and he just ate a woodchuck his dog had caught.He had heard Homer, too, say that "if I had not had books," he "did not know how to pass the rainy days," though perhaps he had not read a single book through several rainy seasons.In his own distant parish a priest who could read Greek had taught him to read the verses of the Bible; Les looked sad, so Achilles scolded him for a passage, "Ptroclus, why are you crying like a little girl?"————

"Did you get it from Bithia Got some secret news? son of Akto, son of Ikuz, Or live in Mamitong well; Unless they are dead, it should be sad. " "That's a good poem," he said to me, and under his arm he had a great bundle of white oak bark which he had collected this Sunday morning for a sick man. "I guess it's okay to do something like this today," he said.He thought Homer a great writer, though what he wrote he did not know.It may not be easy to find someone who is simpler and more natural than him.Sin and disease, which made the world so gloomy and gloomy, seemed almost non-existent to him.He was about twenty-eight years old, and he left Canada and his father's house twelve years ago, and came to the United States to find a job and earn some money to buy some land in the future, probably in his hometown.He was fashioned from the crudest of models, a large, rigid body with a very refined manner, a great sunburned neck, thick black hair, and sleepy blue eyes that sometimes flickered Make an expression and become bright.He wore a dirty wool-colored overcoat, a flat gray hat, and cowhide boots.He used to pack his meals in a leaden bucket, and went to work miles from my house,—he spent all summer logging,—he had a great appetite for meat; cold meat, often It was the cold meat of a woodchuck; the coffee was in a stone vase that hung from his belt by a cord, and he sometimes offered me a sip.He came early, through my beanfields, but in no hurry to work, like all those Yankees.He doesn't want to hurt his body.If the income is only enough to eat and live, he doesn't care.He used to leave his meal in the bushes, and because his dog had bitten a groundhog on the way, he walked a mile and a half more verbally to cook it and put it in the cellar of the house where he lodged, but Before that, he had considered for half an hour whether he could immerse the groundhog in the lake water, safely until night,—this kind of thing would take him a long time to think about.In the morning, when he passed by, he used to say, "How densely the pigeons fly! If my trade did not require me to work every day, I could get all the meat I needed by hunting alone,--a pigeon from a woodchuck , rabbits, partridges, — my God! One day is enough for me for a week."