The Cabin at Pharaoh's Ford [pp. 507-516]

THE CABIZV A T PHARA OH'S FOND.
THE CABIN AT PHARAOH'S FORD.
T was not imposing; it was not pret ty. It was hardly equal in either
of these respects to the prevailing type
of Kansas cabins in those days; and why
Parson Brewster, a minister of the gospel and a man of more than average intelligence, should have made himself
such a home in such a place was one
of the ethical marvels of the settlement.
But there it stood, or sat, on the bluffslope, a few steps from the brink of the
Neosho River, in sight of the ford, and
surrounded on three sides by a stingy
growth of hazel and dogberry bushes.
It was constructed ofunhewn logs, chinked with the most commonplace black
soil, and roofed with clumsy slabs of
cotton-wood, out of which sprouted singular little clusters of green and hungry
twigs as the summer came on. The
parson construed this last-named fact to
be a sort of special providence, and reverently thanked God more than once for
touching his humble abode with "a sign
that could be seen of all men;" but his
neighbors, being better acquainted with
the subtle chemistry of the tree-sap,
knew that the parson had simply cut his
slabs at the wrong time of the year.
The cabin had one door, looking eastward, down the river-bottom, over
clumps of stones and through narrow
paths between the trees and decaying
logs, to where the dimn perspective was
lost in the darkness of a sudden turn of
the stream to the north. There was no
window, because the parson had made
no calculation for any in the plan of his
dwelling, and the omission was not observed until the logs were all up and
ready for the roof, and it was too late to
introduce the necessary opening. There
was a loose slab in one corner of the
roof, however, which in pleasant weather
partially did the office of a window, for,
by pushing it aside, considerable light
could be added from above to that which
came in at the open door below. " It's
just as well," the parson used to remark,
"and there is an excellent precedent for
it: the window in the ark was in the top,
and looked straight up to Him who held
the waters in the hollow of His hand."
And so the quaint little cabin at Pharaoh's Ford came to be known in those
parts as "Parson Brewster's ark."
In spite of its architectural oddity,
this diminutive modern ark was sometimes a rather pleasing thing to look at.
For instance, in the early dawn of that
beautiful summer, after the spring rise
of the river had been subdued to a conservative flow that felt its way carefully
over the pebbles as if loth to disturb
them, and the trees had taken on the
deep and sultry green which was almost
a glow in its peculiar richness, and the
pent-up life at the heart of the cottonwood slabs in the cabin's roof had begun to seek its way to the light in scores
of little twigs bearing just leaves enough
to hide their nakedness, there was something about the place that seemed to
clothe it with a rude charm; and the
wide-open door was at once an invitation and an interdiction to the sensitive
passer-by. Nor was it much, if any, less
alluring in the first stage of that succeeding autumn, when the rains, and winds,
and early frost had washed and chilled
the foliage into a crisped and jagged
splendor, and the river was shuddering
with apprehensions of ice and snow, and
the languid twigs in the cotton-wood
roof-slabs lay like tattered guidons about
the awkward chimney and under the
I 874.]
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