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[ Episode 2 Preview: Thomas Need ]
>> BARBARA MCFADZEN: Well Need was an Englishman, he was an Oxford graduate, he was a gentleman
certainly, and actually he came with his servant, and a bookcase, with his books, to his shanty.
>> THOMAS NEED: The snow had now so nearly disappeared that I began to prepare for my
departure to the woods, having previously made a bargain with a skillful woodsman to
clear me twenty acres of forest.
On the whole, things had gone very well with me beyond my most sanguine anticipation! Still
I was about to enter on a new and untried mode of life, with rude uneducated men for
my companions, to whose level I must bring down my own feelings and ideas.
The distance from Peterborough to the lakeshore was about six miles. We started about nine
o'clock in the morning; and I, in my inexperience, believing that though the road through the
forest was notoriously bad, a couple of hours at most would suffice for the tract.
We arrived at six o'clock in the evening - covered with mud, hungry, and exhausted.
On reaching the shore, no boat was in waiting, nor was there any appearance of one on the
whole water; this was a bitter disappointment, and I fear I lost both temper and patience;
but after a little time, I observed something like a boat beating against a rocky headland,
a few hundred yards off, which indeed it proved to be, although apparently water-logged and
rotten.
The next morning I was up with the sun, and abroad to visit my land, in the length and
breadth thereof, in order to determine on a site for my future abode.
Meanwhile, I wandered on, forming plans for the future, and peopling the solitudes around
me in my mind's eye, until the lengthening shades of evening warned me to rejoin my companions.
A clear tall column of smoke, rising above the trees, marked their position; and a haunch
of venison, bought of an Indian, as usual, which I found roasting at the fire, proved
a welcome finish to the labors of the day.