ur direction, as if they knew funny
secrets about us, and would then break into noisy jeers. They did not
interest me, and probably because I had seen the lightness and grace and
beauty of Sally Dunkelberg and tasted the sweetness of her fancies.

There were the singing and spelling schools and the lyceums, but those
nights were few and far between. Not more than four or five in the whole
winter were we out of the joyful candle-light of our own home. Even then
our hands were busy making lighters or splint brooms, or paring and
quartering and stringing the apples or cracking butternuts while Aunt
Deel read.

After the sheep came we kept only two cows. The absence of cattle was a
help to the general problem of cleanliness. The sheep were out in the
fields and I kept away from them for fear the rams would butt me. I
remember little of the sheep save the washing and shearing and the lambs
which Uncle Peabody brought to our fireside to be warmed on cold
mornings of the early spring. I remember asking where the lambs came
from when I was a small boy, and that Uncle Peabody said they came from
"over the river"--a place regarding which his merry ignorance provoked
me. In the spring they were driven to the deep hole and dragged, one by
one, into the cold water to have their fleeces washed. When the weather
had warmed men came to shear them and their oily white fleeces were
clipped close to the skin and each taken off in one piece like a coat
and rolled up and put on the wool pile.

I was twelve years old when I began to be the reader for our little
family. Aunt Deel had long complained that she couldn't keep up with her
knitting and read so much. We had not seen Mr. Wright for nearly two
years, but he had sent us the novels of Sir Walter Scott and I had led
them heart deep into the creed battles of Old Mortality.

Then came the evil days of 1837, when the story of our lives began to
quicken its pace and excite our interest in its coming chapters. It gave
us enough to think of, God knows.

Wild speculations in land and the American paper-money system had
brought us into rough going. The banks of the city of New York had
suspended payment of their notes. They could no longer meet their
engagements. As usual, the burden fell heaviest on the poor. It was hard
to get money even for black salts.

Uncle Peabody had been silent and depressed for a month or more. He had
signed a note for Rodney Barnes, a cousin, long before and was