Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/207

 savage. To his honor Judge Chambers's, to breakfast.[67] His log-tavern is comfortable; he farms two and a half quarter sections, and raises from 40 to 60 bushels of corn an acre. Nearly all the good land on this road is entered. "I had," says he, "hard work for the first two or three years." The judge is a smart man of about 40, and not only a judge, but a senator also, and what is more, the best horse-jockey in the state. He seems very active, prudent, cautious, and industrious, and, like all the rest of the people on this road, kind-hearted. He fills the two-fold station of waiter and hostler in part; I say in part, for, as he has no servant, the drudgery must be done by the traveller himself, if he have a horse or horses. His honor left my driver to do all, and hastily rode off to a distant mill for his grist, now much wanted, and with which he returned in about two hours, while her honor, Mrs. Judge, and the six Miss Judges, prepared my good breakfast. These ladies do all the work of the house, and some of the field; every thing seems comfortable and easy to them, although the blue sky and the broad sun stare and peep through cracks and crevices in the roof of their house. While I sat at breakfast, his honor's mother, a fine smart young woman of four-score, came briskly riding up, and alighted at the door; {207} as good a horse-*woman as ever mounted a side-saddle. She had been to pay a distant visit, and seemed as though her strength and youth were renewed, like the eagle's. She reminded me of Moses, "with his eye not dim, nor his natural force abated."