Page:Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands.djvu/97

Rh Again, December 26th, she writes (you will observe the date, one day after the world's greatest anniversary):

""Where are we now, and who are we, that we should be so blessed of the Lord? I can scarcely realize that we are thus comfortably fixed and keeping house, so soon after our marriage, when I consider what was before us.""

Think of it, girls! no chairs except those rudely made with skins stretched across them. Table made of four posts, covered with boards sawed by hand; stools made of logs sawed of proper length; pegs along the walls upon which to hang the clothing, nails being too expensive a luxury to use. Beds were bunks fastened to the walls, and filled with dried grass and leaves, and yet the young bride, accustomed to the luxuries of civilization, set about building a home around which always cluster life's comforts and joys. Every page of her diary speaks her thankfulness for unnumbered blessings, and not a discordant note, or a complaint, or a regret in all the pages. If I were to stop to moralize, I should mark the love that only comes where gold glitters, as the demoralizing agency of our day in this Christian land. Young people desire too often to start in life rich, even when their honored parents toiled for years for life comforts. This desire for wealth is to-day so universal as to mark it the chief aim of life. To start rich and be happy