. Stephen of Philadelphia; a story of Penn's colony . f timbers would be necessary to hold up the earthat the top, otherwise we should have it tumbling aboutour ears, and father took upon himself the work ofhewing logs, while mother and I dug and dug, throwingthe loose sand directly at the mouth of the openingto make there a roadway to the river below. Before we had made what might be called a goodbeginning of the task, I came to believe that it couldnot have been much harder work to build a house oflogs; but we had already expended so much strength,that it would have been foolish to drop the
. Stephen of Philadelphia; a story of Penn's colony . f timbers would be necessary to hold up the earthat the top, otherwise we should have it tumbling aboutour ears, and father took upon himself the work ofhewing logs, while mother and I dug and dug, throwingthe loose sand directly at the mouth of the openingto make there a roadway to the river below. Before we had made what might be called a goodbeginning of the task, I came to believe that it couldnot have been much harder work to build a house oflogs; but we had already expended so much strength,that it would have been foolish to drop the plan then infavor of something else. Besides, nearly all those who had come over in theship with us were making the same kind of dwellings,having been led to do so by the example set by EdmundLovett and father; therefore we were seemingly bound STEPHEN OF PHILADELPHIA to finish the task, or give our fellow passengers goodreason for calling us simples. It grieved me to see my mother doing such work;but how might it be otherwise, since there were none. who could be hired to perform the labor, because ofall who had come ashore digging caves in which toshelter themselves ? When we were so far inside the bank that it was nolonger possible to throw the sand out with a spade,mother carried it in a huge piece of bark as I scraped OUR CAVE HOME COMPLETED 25 it away, and we were nearly ready for the timbers thatwere to support the roof, when father appeared withsuch as he had cut. OUR CAVE HOME COMPLETED It would be dry reading if I wrere to set down whatwe did day after day until we had what might be calleda home, therefore I will say that we were near to aweek in building the shelter, and when the task wasfinished we had a roomy cave, with logs stretchingacross the top, held in place by other logs set on end. At one side was a hole which extended entirelythrough the sand to the surface, and when this had beenfitted with a chimney of bark, cut from ahuge tree intwo sections, and of suff
Size: 1678px × 1489px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidstephenofphi, bookyear1910
