ion of blankets, living in this primitive manner until my
father and D'ri had felled the timber and built a log house. We
brought flour from Malone,--a dozen sacks or more,--and while they
were building, I had to supply my mother with fish and game and
berries for the table--a thing easy enough to do in that land of
plenty. When the logs were cut and hewn I went away, horseback, to
Canton for a jug of rum. I was all day and half the night going
and coming, and fording the Grasse took me stirrups under.

Then the neighbors came to the raising--a jolly company that
shouted "Hee, oh, hee!" as they lifted each heavy log to its place,
and grew noisier quaffing the odorous red rum, that had a mighty
good look to me, although my father would not hear of my tasting
it. When it was all over, there was nothing to pay but our
gratitude.

While they were building bunks, I went off to sawmill with the oxen
for boards and shingles. Then, shortly, we had a roof over us, and
floors to walk on, and that luxury D'ri called a "pyaz," although
it was not more than a mere shelf with a roof over it. We chinked
the logs with moss and clay at first, putting up greased paper in
the window spaces. For months we knew not the luxury of the glass
pane.

That summer we "changed work" with the neighbors, and after we had
helped them awhile they turned to in the clearing of our farm. We
felled the trees in long, bushy windrows, heaping them up with
brush and small wood when the chopping was over. That done, we
fired the rows, filling the deep of heaven with smoke, as it seemed
to me, and lighting the night with great billows of flame.

By mid-autumn we had cleared to the stumps a strip half down the
valley from our door. Then we turned to on the land of our
neighbors, my time counting half, for I was sturdy and could swing
the axe to a line, and felt a joy in seeing the chips fly. But my
father kept an eye on me, and held me back as with a leash,

My mother was often sorely tried for the lack of things common as
dirt these better days. Frequently our only baking-powder was
white lye, made by dropping ash-cinders into wafer. Our cinders
were made by letting the sap of green timber drip into hot ashes.
Often deer's tallow, bear's grease, or raccoon's oil served for
shortening, and the leaves of the wild raspberry for tea. Our
neighbors went to mill at Canton--a journey of five days, going and
coming, with an ox-team, and beset with