THE SWAMP ANGEL. Prentice Mulford Mulford

CHAPTER I.

      ALPHA.

       Table of Contents

       I had long entertained the idea of building for myself a house in the woods, and there living alone. Not that I was cynical, or disgusted with the world. I have no reason to be disgusted with the world. It has given me lots of amusement, sandwiched between headaches, periods of repentance, and sundry hours spent in the manufacture of good resolutions, many of which I could not keep, because they spoiled so quickly on my hands. I have tried to treat the world pretty well, and it has rewarded me. For the world invariably returns kick for kick, frown for frown, smile for smile; and if my reader is a pretty girl, you will keep your beauty far longer by having ever a smile on your face, that comes from the heart, and is not for company occasions, painted on the surface.

      I found at last, in New Jersey, a piece of woods, a swamp, a spring near by, a rivulet, and, above all, a noble, wide-branching oak. The owner willingly consented to my building there, and under the oak I built.

      That was five years ago. I was then forty-nine years of age, and feel no older now; in fact, not quite so old. What others may feel, about my “time of life,” is another affair. The main point is involved in one’s own feelings on this head. While a bottle of champagne is actively at work in a man’s organization, what does he care how others feel as to his condition or age?

      I had seen, in these forty-nine years, two years of life as an indifferent sailor on a merchant vessel and whaler. On the latter I was cook, to the misery of all on board who came within the range of my culinary misdeeds. It was not discovered that I had never learned this noble and necessary art until our vessel was off soundings, and then it was too late to repair the damage. I was twelve years in California, where I dug a little gold and a good deal of dirt. I have taught school, tended bar, kept a grocery, run for the legislature, been a post officer, peddled a very tough article of beef on horseback, to the miners on the Tuolumne river bars and gulches, started a hog ranche and failed, served as a special policeman, and tax collector, kept an express office, prospected for silver in the Nevadas, found nothing but snow, scenery, and misery, pre-empted no end of land, laid out towns which are laid out yet, run a farm to weeds and farrow land, and lectured, and written a good deal for the papers. I have tried my constitution and its by-laws in ways both reputable and otherwise, but it’s sound yet,