Their house--a double log cabin--was, to my eye, the model of a Western
villa. Nature had laid out before it grounds which could not be
improved. Within, female taste had veiled every rudeness--availed itself
of every sylvan grace.
In this charming abode what laughter, what sweet thoughts, what pleasing
fancies, did we not enjoy! May such never desert those who reared it and
made us so kindly welcome to all its pleasures!
Fragments of city life were dexterously crumbled into the dish prepared
for general entertainment. Ice creams followed the dinner drawn by the
gentlemen from the river, and music and fireworks wound up the evening
of days spent on the Eagle's Nest. Now they had prepared a little fleet
to pass over to the Fourth of July celebration, which some queer
drumming and fifing, from the opposite bank, had announced to be "on
hand."
We found the free and independent citizens there collected beneath the
trees, among whom many a round Irish visage dimpled at the usual puffs
of Ameriky.
The orator was a New Englander, and the speech smacked loudly of Boston,
but was received with much applause, and followed by a plentiful dinner,
provided by and for the Sovereign People, to which Hail Columbia served
as grace.
[Illustration: LOG CABIN AT ROCK RIVER]
Returning, the gay flotilla hailed the little flag which the children
had raised from a log-cabin, prettier than any president ever saw, and
drank the health of their country and all mankind, with a clear
conscience.
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