"Mr. Wilson starts to-morrow for Cloverdale, and I take this opportunity to write to you. Of course, you will hear from him all about me; but still it may gratify you to hear from me by letter. I am happy and well as I can be in a new home of promise without you. "I have seen many happy hours, and some that were gloomy since I came here. Uncle Walter told the truth about this country; it is a land of promise, handsome now in the state of nature. But you know that he who comes here must labor hard, and endure many privations, before he succeeds as he desires. God has blessed the Lake Country with a fine soil and great advantages. Still, as I expected, money does not grow on the bushes here, nor are the softest couches gathered from the ground. Labor, honest, resolute labor alone can secure the objects of good desire. For this I am ready with a strong hand and an ardent heart; and trusting in God to prosper me, I mean to have a home and farm that I can call mine. And while clearing a farm, and bringing field after field to culture and beauty, will I not be clearing my life, and bringing mind and heart to culture, fertility, light and bloom? "I know you would like it out here, and feel your young years rolling back, and your hearts growing green again on the banks of the Cayuga. The country is _very_ handsome. The deer are so tame they will almost eat out of my hand. Fish and fowl are plenty. Each homely cabin is the shelter of large and hopeful hearts, and the Indians are all kindness to the settlers. O, when you can come and enter my home, will we not take comfort? My love to all. "Your affectionate son, "M. FABENS." III. A BEAR HUNT. Fabens was pleased with his neighbors, and warmly reciprocated the interest they took in him. There was old Moses Waldron, the first settler, an out-and-out backwoodsman; smart with an axe, sure with a gun, free with a bowl of metheglin, open in hospitality, and an enemy only to owls, and blackbirds, wolves, thieves, tories and the British. He chased the tories and redcoats in his dreams, and talked to himself while walking alone awake. The owls annoyed him sorely. Not because they killed his pretty chickens, but because there was so little of them beside their feathers, and their eyes were so monstrous white and large, and they had such a ghostly halloo. Whenever he caught an owl's hollow voice in ominous boomings from the woods, he stopped and cursed him, and cried, "Ah hoo, hoo, ah hoo-ah; ah hoo, you pesky torment! if I had you by the neck, I'd wring it for you, I'll warrant you I would, ah-hoo-ah!"