bottom and the lower ends of the
chimes were warped and charred beyond repair.

Largely influenced by Addison's advice, grandmother Ruth consented to
the purchase of one of the new crank churns. For a year or more he had
been secretly cogitating a scheme to avoid so much tiresome work when
churning; and a crank churn, he foresaw, would lend itself to such a
project much more readily than a churn with an upright dasher. It was a
plan that finally took the form of a revolving shaft overhead along the
walk from the kitchen to the stable, where it was actuated by a light
horse-power. Little belts descending from this shaft operated not only
the churn but a washing machine, a wringer, a corn shelter, a lathe and
several other machines with so much success and saving of labor that
even grandmother herself smiled approvingly.

"And that's all due to me!" Halstead used to exclaim once in a while.
"If I hadn't burnt up that old churn, we would be tugging away at it to
this day!"

"Yes, Halse, you are a wonderful boy in the kitchen!" Ellen would remark
roguishly.

CHAPTER VII

BEAR-TONE

One day about the first of February, Catherine Edwards made the rounds
of the neighborhood with a subscription paper to get singers for a
singing school. A veteran "singing master"--Seth Clark, well known
throughout the country--had offered to give the young people of the
place a course of twelve evening lessons or sessions in vocal music, at
four dollars per evening; and Catherine was endeavoring to raise the sum
of forty-eight dollars for this purpose.

Master Clark was to meet us at the district schoolhouse for song
sessions of two hours, twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday evenings at
seven o'clock. Among us at the old Squire's we signed eight dollars.

The singing school did not much interest me personally, for the reason
that I did not expect to attend. As the Frenchman said when invited to
join a fox hunt, I had been. Two winters previously there had been a
singing school in an adjoining school district, known as "Bagdad," where
along with others I had presented myself as a candidate for vocal
culture, and had been rejected on the grounds that I lacked both "time"
and "ear." What was even less to my credit, I had been censured as being
concerned in a disturbance outside the schoolhouse. That was my first
winter in Maine, and the teacher at that singing school was not Seth
Clark, but an itinerant singing master widely know