,
long hay-fork and lantern, returned to the place of encounter, where
they found Bruin already dead. Bear-steak was served all around the next
morning.

Ebenezer Webster, the father of Daniel, settled at Salisbury about the
time that Stephen went to Plymouth, and the hardships they underwent
were very similar.

Daniel was born ten years after the Revolutionary War, and had to pass
through many of the privations of the first settlers.

The clearing of the land was a tedious process, in which all boys had
to participate. The forest trees were felled generally when in full
foliage, about the first of June, and laid thus until the next March,
when the "lopping of the limbs," as it was called, went on, in which
boys, with their small hatchets, took part.

About the middle of May, when perfectly dry, they were set on fire, and
the small limbs, with the leaves, were burned. In the midst of the
tree-trunks, as they lay, corn was planted in the burnt ground, and
usually yielded some sixty bushels, shelled, to the acre.

In the early autumn, when the corn was in milk, bears, hedgehogs, and
coons were very troublesome, for they trampled down a great deal more
than they ate. Later in the autumn the chopping was infested by
squirrels. All practicable means were used for killing these visitors.
Bears were caught in log traps, hedgehogs were hunted with clubs, and
coons were caught in steel traps. Squirrels generally visited the
chopping in the daytime, and were killed with bows and arrows, and
sometimes caught in box traps. All of these animals were considered good
food.

Just before the frost came the corn was gathered and shucked, and
afterwards husked and put into the granary. During the winter the felled
trees were sometimes cut for firewood, and those remaining in the spring
were "junked," as it was called, and rolled into immense piles and
burned, after which a crop of rye or wheat was sown, and hacked in with
hoes, the roots of the trees preventing the movement of the harrow. The
process of "junking" was a tedious one, as the burnt logs soon covered
the axe-handle with smut, drying up the skin of the hands so they would
often crack and bleed.

It is said that young Daniel disliked this toil very much, and was among
the earliest to devise "niggering," as it was called. In this process a
stick of wood was laid across the log and lighted with fire, so it would
burn down through the larger log, when fanned by the breeze,