The following text is adapted from Herman Melville’s 1855 novel Israel Potter. Israel is a young man wandering through New England during the late eighteenth century.

He hired himself out for three months; at the end of that time to receive for his wages two hundred acres of land lying in New Hampshire. [...] His employer proving false to the contract in the matter of the land, and there being no law in the country to force him to fulfil it, Israel—who, however brave-hearted, and even much of a dare-devil upon a pinch, seems nevertheless to have evinced, throughout many parts of his career, a singular patience and mildness—was obliged to look round for other means of livelihood than clearing out a farm for himself in the wilderness.