time to learn something of them and this would have proved of value to me yet i am thankful that had not yet been thrust into our rural common schools to knot the brains and the time of those who should be learning something of positive and practical utility before the spring of opened father had taken a job of clearing fifty acres of wild land a mile north of our cot and here he and his sons were employed save in winter for the next two years tlie work was rugged and but the land had been with yellow pine a thousand years before � as a hundred giant trunks long since but not yet wholly back to dust this was by a forest of white pines of which hundreds were still standing mostly lifeless while a large number lay prone and dead though the trunks were mainly sound black ash in abundance formed a later and generally living growth though a fierce which swept over this whole region during a great four years before we saw it had devoured much and killed more of the forest but increased the of etc which we were required to dispose of when we first it the snow was just going and the water and were knee deep we were all indifferent when compared with those who usually with great forests and the job looked so formidable that travellers along the which skirted our task were accustomed to halt and comfort us with that we boys would be grown men before we saw the end of it but cutting trees and bushes up great into drawing them together rolling up and burning great heaps of logs saving out here and there a log that would do to saw digging out rotten pines from the boil wherein they had themselves so that they might dry sufficiently to bum and burning brush and rotten or worthless sticks and home such wood as served for fuel we until the job was done when i could have begun another just like it and managed so as not to more than two thirds of the r we expended on this and now if any one has a great tract of land to clear of trees logs and bushes i fancy that i might give him hints worth considering n b � i work for pay we liad been farmers of the poorer class in new we took rank with day in we had lived freely though not much less in our earlier home w e were compelled to observe a the bread of our class in this section was almost exclusively made of e � indian corn being little grown on the clay soil of western � and though there are always about six women alive who know how to make of the best bread ever tasted our mother was not one of these recollections of a busy life and never learned their admirable art then the clay itself with the weather from mire to rock is not well adapted to bare feet while the detestable canada which every road and almost every field in are not to of temper or propriety of speech having the sharp of these dug out of my feet with needles was long my daily terror and my nightly torture the tough with which their rough experiences had covered our naked feet rendering the of the more laborious and painful than any soft footed person can realize i have never since been able to stiff clay at their full value a ledge eighty rods east of the from which we worked westward afforded us good spring water and supplied us also with whereof we killed some which might have proved to us boys as we worked among the brush and weeds had they caught the idea still clearing land is pleasant work especially when you have a hundred heaps of logs and brush burning at once of a dark windy night while ten or twenty acres of fallen leafy timber on fire at once affords a magnificent spectacle we were to have had per acre with the use of a team and half the wood suitable for timber and fuel and though even in those days was not large pay for two years work of a man and two boys we were well satisfied in the event however mr died before we had effected a settlement when his estate was declared and we were out of a part of our pay our third year in was spent two miles farther west where we inhabited and worked a little place known as father ran a neighboring saw mill on shares as he twelve hours on and twelve off with a partner i insisted on being his but i think once working from noon till midnight my ambition and i never fully learned the art and mystery of boards by water power my brother though younger was more persistent and made greater progress i gave that summer pretty diligently to with very meagre results first the season was wet till the of june and our com planted in mortar encountered a brick like crust when it undertook to come up and unable to pierce or break it pushed under it for two inches or so until we dug off the crust and introduced the pale imprisoned shoots to next came a long summer of intense and our fields so that tlie made no serious impression on their rock like masses the corn to stand and turn yellow while the came up thick rank and vigorous covering the fields a most to the eye at a distance we lad failed in an attempt to make sugar that spring the sou being bad the trees distant and our knowledge of the very meagre our crops amounted to little while the we drank here was so bad that the fever ami struck � ti our parents in 