o sleep in the woods
beneath the boughs of a pine; and it was not till the next forenoon that
they found the clearing and the little log house in which my
great-grandmother began her humble housekeeping.

Other settlers made their way hither; and other farms were cleared.
Indians and moose departed and came no more. Then followed half a
century of robust, agricultural life, on a virgin soil. The boys grew
large and tall; the girls were strong and handsome. It was a hearty and
happy era.

But no happy era is enduring; the young men began to take what was
quaintly called "the western fever," and leave the home county for
greater opportunities in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. The young women,
too, went away in numbers to work in the cotton factories at Lowell,
Lawrence and Biddeford; few of them came back; or if they returned, they
were not improved in health, or otherwise.

The third son of the Revolutionary soldier and pioneer remained at the
old farm and lived on alone there after his own sons had left home, to
enter other and less certain avocations than farming.

Then came war again, the terrible Civil War, when every one of these
sons, true to their soldier ancestry, entered the army of the Republic.
Of the five not one survived that murderous conflict. And so it happened
that we, the grandchildren, war waifs and orphaned, came back in 1865-6,
to live at grandfather's old farm on the Pennesseewassee.

We came from four different states of the Union, and two of us had never
before even seen the others. It is, therefore, not remarkable that at
first there were some small disagreements, due to our different ideas of
things.

We were, of course, a great burden upon the old folks, who were
compelled to begin life over again, so to speak, on our account. At the
age of sixty-five grandfather set himself to till the farm on a larger
scale, and to renew his lumbering operations, winters. Grandmother, too,
was constrained to increase her dairy, her flocks of geese and other
poultry, and to begin anew the labor of spinning and knitting.

It is but fair to say, however, that we all--with one exception,
perhaps--had a decent sense of the obligations we incurred, and on most
occasions, I believe, we did what we could to aid in the labors of the
farm.

Much as we added to the burdens of our grandparents, I can now see that
our coming lent fresh zest to their lives; they had something new to
live for; they took hold of lif