The next day these scorched and half-burned logs and brands (over which the fire had run, burning up all the limbs and tops) were to be piled up and entirely consumed. The men and boys came to the field, dressed in tow frocks and trousers. Maccoy and Grant came to help with oxen; and the logs were drawn together, and rolled up in piles, and all the large brands picked up and flung on top or tucked under the piles, which occupied the whole day. The next morning they set all the piles on fire, and tended them, in order to make a clean burn, throwing in the brands and branches. They were, every one of them, just as black as a smut-coal; and at night they went to the river, washed both their persons and clothes, and put on clean garments. The lads now entered with new enthusiasm upon preparation for their postponed expedition on the river. It is the nature of a well-constructed boy to receive peculiar delight from any thing of his own contrivance. The rudest plaything of his own invention or manufacture is dearer to him than a much better one that is the workmanship of another. Boys who are possessed of any pluck, and are worth raising, delight in the development of their own powers, both of brain and muscle: you may observe it in a little child taking its first steps, and holding the father's finger. The little thing toddles on demurely enough, so long as led; but the moment it leaves the father's finger, and strikes out boldly for the safe harbor of its mother's lap, its eyes are dancing in its head, hands going up and down in high glee, and, screaming and crowing with delight, it tumbles into those extended arms breathless but in ecstasy. That feeling of self-help, so dear to the child, is no less so to the boy or to the man, of whom the child is the father. Therefore, though the boys were under great obligations to Mr. Seth for putting the raft into their hands, and to Mr. Honeywood for teaching them to manage it, and thus contributing to their amusement, they were under still greater obligations to them for opening before them such a field for contrivance, furnishing them with resources, and placing them in a position that stimulated their own energies. They commenced operations by boring two holes with an auger into the cross-tie at the centre of the raft, into which they drove two crotches some five feet in length. Clay from the frog-pond, and sand from the river, were mixed together and well worked, and wooden trowels made to handle it with. Several of the boys made use of the shoulder-blades of moose, which made very good substitutes for steel trowels. The shell of the snapping turtle, and pieces of pine and hemlock bark, were used to carry the mortar on. Plastering the floor of the raft with this mortar to the depth of a foot, they bedded flat stones in it to form a hearth, then built up a fireplace with three sides but open in front, plastering the stones with clay both inside and out.