a farmer, and was one in the old days. It is true I did not have so
many neighbors as people nowadays, and I went without things that farmers
now have. I didn't have newfangled cultivators, reapers, or such things.
But then what a stout house I lived in, a big, square house, and its frame
wasn't made of pipe-stem sticks! They were big, solid sticks of oak that I
had, and you could see them sticking out of the corners and down from the
ceiling. What chimneys I had, and the bricks came all the way from
England! I had none of your box stoves, but a big fire in the chimney
which you could see. My wife, Polly, had no carpets on the floor, but she
had rugs she made of rags. And my darter, Jerusha, what a cook she was!
She made pies--cooked 'em, I mean--in a brick oven, and she stewed her
chickens in pots hung on hooks from a swinging crane in the chimney. And
then I gave Jerusha a turn-spit, too, which she put before the fire, and I
gave her a tin kitchen. Polly had a spinning-wheel and Jerusha a
hand-loom, and that is where our cloth came from. I raised corn and grass
and potatoes, and we had plenty of apples, and what fun we had at huskin'
parties and apple parings! I took care of my horses, oxen, cows, and
sheep, pigs, too, and had to kill my own critters and cure the hams we
used. In those days we had to do many things ourselves, such as dip our
candles, and I made my eyes weak mending Jedidiah's shoes in the evening,
a candle near me, and the tall old family clock ticking in the corner."

Miss Barry was charming in her antique dress, as every White Shield
thought. It came down from her great-great-grandmother, Sally Tilton, who
was a famous belle in her day. The dress was hooped and ruffled,
"trailed," also, in the old style. Miss Barry's hair was powdered, and she
wore white satin shoes. She represented the "Daughters of Liberty," and
told about Emily Geiger, the South Carolina young lady who undertook to
carry a written message from General Greene to General Sumter, and when
the British took her, she ate up her letter! The enemy released her, not
finding her message. She went on and she did her errand, though, giving
the message from memory, as General Greene, fearful of a capture, had told
her the contents of the letter. Then Miss Barry told about some girls in
New York who gave a coat of molasses and flag-down to a young man
disrespectful to Congress. She gave an account of the young ladies in
Virginia, Massachusetts,