It so chanced, however, that a gentleman from Buffalo, E. P. Dorr, who
had, in his early days, commanded a vessel on the lake, found himself,
shortly after, at a small port on the Canada shore, not far from Long
Point Island. Here he met an old shipmate, Captain Davis, whose vessel
had gone ashore at a more favorable point, and who related to him the
circumstances of the wreck of the Conductor. Struck by the account,
Captain Dorr procured a sleigh and drove across the frozen bay to the
shanty of Abigail Becker. He found her with her six children, all
thinly clad and barefooted in the bitter cold. She stood there six feet
or more of substantial womanhood,--not in her stockings, for she had
none,--a veritable daughter of Anak, broad-bosomed, large-limbed, with
great, patient blue eyes, whose very smile had a certain pathos, as if
one saw in it her hard and weary life-experience. She might have passed
for any amiable giantess, or one of those much--developed maids of honor
who tossed Gulliver from hand to hand in the court of Brobdingnag. The
thing that most surprised her visitor was the childlike simplicity of
the woman, her utter unconsciousness of deserving anything for an action
that seemed to her merely a matter of course. When he expressed his
admiration with all the warmth of a generous nature, she only opened her
wide blue eyes still wider with astonishment.
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