It is surprising with how little of those comforts which
civilization induces us to regard as necessaries we can get along,
when cast into the midst of the western wilds. The female whose foot
has trodden, from infancy upward, on nothing harder than a good
carpet-who has been reared amid all the appliances of abundance and
art, seems at once to change her nature, along with her habits, and
often proves a heroine, and an active assistant, when there was so
much reason to apprehend she might turn out to be merely an
encumbrance. In the course of a life that is now getting to be well
stored with experience of this sort, as well as of many other
varieties, we can recall a hundred cases of women, who were born and
nurtured in affluence and abundance, who have cheerfully quitted the
scenes of youth, their silks and satins, their china and plate,
their mahogany and Brussels, to follow husbands and fathers into the
wilderness, there to compete with the savage, often for food, and
always for the final possession of the soil!
But in the case of Dorothy and Blossom, the change had never been of
this very broad character, and habit had long been preparing them
for scenes even more savage than that into which they were now cast.
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