The house of M. Beauvais was a long, low building, with a porch or shed in front, and another in the rear; the chimney occupied the center, dividing the house into two parts, with each a fireplace.  One of these served for dining-room, parlor, and principal bed-chamber; the other was the kitchen; and each had a small room taken off at the end for private chambers or cabinets.  There was no loft or garret, a pair of stairs being a rare thing in the village.  The furniture, excepting the beds and the looking-glass, was of the most common kind....  The yard was enclosed with cedar pickets, eight or ten inches in diameter, and six feet high, placed upright, sharpened at the top, in the manner of a stockade fort.  In front the yard was narrow, but in the rear quite spacious, and containing the barn and stables, the negro quarters, and all the necessary offices of a farm-yard.  Beyond this, there was a spacious garden enclosed with pickets....

The pursuits of the inhabitants were chiefly agricultural, although all were more or less engaged in traffic for peltries with the Indians, or in working the lead mines in the interior.  Peltry and lead constituted almost the only circulating medium.  All politics, or discussions of the affairs of government were entirely unknown; the commandant took care of all that sort of thing.  But instead of them, the processions and ceremonies of the church, and the public balls, furnished ample matter for occupation and amusement.  Their agriculture was carried on in a field of several thousand acres, enclosed at the common expense, and divided into lots....  Whatever they may have gained in some respects, I question very much whether the change of government has contributed to increase their happiness.  About a quarter of a mile off, there was a village of Kickapoo Indians, who lived on the most friendly terms with the white people.  The boys often intermingled with those of the white village, and practised shooting with the bow and arrow—­an accomplishment which I acquired with the rest, together with a little smattering of the Indian language, which I forgot on leaving the place.

[Footnote 38:  Distinguished in literature and as a political writer; a native of Pennsylvania.]

* * * * *

=_Gulian C. Verplanck, 1786-1870._= (Manual, p. 487.)

From the “Literary and Historical Discourses.”

=_121._= THE SCHOOLMASTER.

The schoolmaster’s occupation is laborious and ungrateful; its rewards are scanty and precarious.  He may indeed be, and he ought to be animated by the consciousness of doing good, that best of all consolations, that noblest of all motives.  But that too must be often clouded by doubt and uncertainty.  Obscure and inglorious as his daily occupation may appear to learned pride or worldly ambition, yet to be truly successful and happy he must be animated by the spirit of the same great principles which inspired the most