“What a situation! Here was I, above six hundred miles from New York, without a dollar, and without a full suit of clothing! My watch, too, was gone! I sat down in a mood of absolute despair, and wished I had died in my delirium. The people bade me cheer up, they said they would not charge me anything for their trouble. My inmost conviction was that they need not—they had paid themselves too well out of my property. But what was I to do? The man gave me an old coarse rough coat of his own: I accepted it, for it would prevent me from perishing. But how should I live? Winter was coming down, there was no work, but that of felling timber, and ploughing the new enclosures, and I had no strength for it; besides, the deep snow would soon put an end to that. But there was sufficient food to be had; the people of the inn said I might stay and recruit myself a little. I did so. I believed I owed them nothing, that the balance was really to my credit. “But there was one man always busy, that was the blacksmith. I heard his hammer ringing on the anvil long before it was light in a morning, and often till late at night. In my lack of anything to occupy my time with, I wandered to his forge, and fell into conversation with him. He had heard my case, and rough as he seemed, he said he felt for me. ‘I wish I could swing a hammer like you,’ I said, ‘I would come and help you, for you seem to have too much to do.’ “‘I wish you could then,’ said he, ‘for I want a help dreadfully. But why should not you soon?’ “I shook my head. ‘I am too weak yet,’ I said. “‘But there’s strength in hominy and pork and peach-brandy,’ he said. ‘Come to my log-hut; you can rest and feed till you feel your strength, and by-and-by, you can do a little.’ “I accepted his offer. Our living was, as he said, almost literally hominy and pork, but these suited my reduced system excellently, and in a few weeks I was strong enough to strike with the hammer against him. He had plough-shares and all the irons for ploughs and harrows, shoes for horses, and tiring and bushes for drays for the farmers around to make, and having nothing much else to do in the winter, they were always coming to demand them.