"Men in general, but more partic'larly husbands," assented Old Kennebec; "howsomever, there's another thing they don't an' can't never take in, an' that's sport. Steve does river drivin' as he would horseracin' or tiger-shootin' or tight-rope dancin'; an' he always did from a boy. When he was about twelve or fifteen, he used to help the river-drivers spring and fall, reg'lar. He couldn't do nothin' but shin up an' down the rocks after hammers an' hatchets an' ropes, but he was turrible pleased with his job. 'Stepanfetchit,' they used to call him them days, --Stephanfetchit Waterman.""Good name for him yet," came in acid tones from the sink. "He's still steppin' an' fetchin', only it's Rose that's doin' the drivin' now.""I'm not driving anybody, that I know of," answered Rose, with heightened color, but with no loss of her habitual self-command.
"Then, when he graduated from errants," went on the crafty old man, who knew that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin, "Steve used to get seventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the river--if you can call this here silv'ry streamlet a river. He'd pick off a log here an' there an' send it afloat, an' dig out them that hed got ketched in the rocks, and tidy up the banks jest like spring house-cleanin'. If he'd hed any kind of a boss, an' hed be'n trained on the Kennebec, he'd 'a' made a turrible smart driver, Steve would.""He'll be drownded, that's what'll become o' him," prophesied Mrs. Wiley; "'specially if Rose encourages him in such silly foolishness as ridin' logs from his house down to ourn, dark nights.""Seein' as how Steve built ye a nice pig pen last month, 'pears to me you might have a good word for him now an' then, mother," remarked Old Kennebec, reaching for his second piece of pie.
"I wa'n't a mite deceived by that pig pen, no more'n I was by Jed Towle's hen coop, nor Ivory Dunn's well-curb, nor Pitt Packard's shed- steps.If you hed ever kep' up your buildin's yourself, Rose's beauxwouldn't hev to do their courtin' with carpenters' tools.""It's the pigpen an' the hencoop you want to keep your eye on, mother, not the motives of them as made 'em. It's turrible onsettlin' to inspeck folks' motives too turrible close.""Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he says," interposed Rose, to change the subject; "but I tell him that a horse doesn't revolve under you, and go sideways at the same time that it is going forwards.""Log-ridin' ain't no trick at all to a man of sperit," said Mr. Wiley. "There's a few places in the Kennebec where the water's too shaller to let the logs float, so we used to build a flume, an' the logs would whiz down like arrers shot from a bow. The boys used to collect by the side o' that there flume to see me ride a log down, an' I've watched 'em drop in a dead faint when I spun by the crowd; but land! you can't drownd some folks, not without you tie nail-kegs to their head an' feet an' drop 'em in the falls; I 've rid logs down the b'ilin'est rapids o' the Kennebec an' never lost my head. I remember well the year o' the gre't freshet, I rid a log from"--"There, there, father, that'll do," said Mrs. Wiley, decisively. "I'll put the cream in the churn, an' you jest work off some o' your steam by bringin' the butter for us afore you start for the bridge. It don't do no good to brag afore your own womenfolks; work goes consid'able better'n stories at every place 'cept the loafers' bench at the tavern."And the baffled raconteur, who had never done a piece of work cheerfully in his life, dragged himself reluctantly to the shed, where, before long, one could hear him moving the dasher up and down sedately to his favorite "churning tune" of--Broad is the road that leads to death, And thousands walk together there; But Wisdom shows a narrow path, With here and there a traveler.
