liave just described but nothing to of my mother � bom half a century after the log cabin stage of � could never be reconciled te this nor to either of the two rather better ones that the family it ed into a poor sort of framed house in fact she had plunged into tlie primitive forest too late in life and never became reconciled to the s inevitable the chimney of the best log house she insisted smoke and its roof in a driving rain do what you might i think the shadow of the great woods oppressed her from the hour she first entered them and though removed but two generations from she was never reconciled to what the less roughly bred must always deem and hardships i never caught the old smile on her face the familiar gladness in her the hearty in her manner from the day she entered woods until tliat of her death nearly thirty years later in august though not yet sixty eight she had for years been worn out by hard work and broken down in mind and body those who knew her only in her later years when toil and trouble had gained the victory over her never truly knew her at all i a year by lake my father had for many years � from hood � fixed on as and the region to wliich his were at length i directed b essentially a good one situated on high rolling land just across the line from county n y in county pa two from the i line of county the region is healthy and the soil f strong though better adapted to grass than to grain ha ne er wished to move again still it was a mistake at his time of life to plunge so deep into the primitive forest the t � elm ash c � yielded very slowly to his axe he and my n a full winter month in off an acre and up and burning made another serious job ing tie toil cold with green roots and by an of which must be allowed years wherein t rot out a who can pay for or forty to eighty acres at once of timber when in full leaf and afford to let it lie untouched for a full year better still two years and then put fire into it favored by a dry and a good breeze then and put it into grain may clear at a third of the cost to and have his land � n far condition than the poor who must bum ip liis timber green because he needs the land to till and afford to lay out of the of his labor for years a poor man a farm out of tlie great woods at more han twice the proper cost and the soil by the pro � i presume my folks gave two thousand days work to ashes from their burned log heaps and em into black the base of pot and pearl ashes they must have wherewith to pay store bills though i� product did not give fifty cents return for each fair day s and the removal of the ashes the soil by than they brought but the crops grown among green in a small from a vast forest are precarious and scanty at best being upon by in n and by eh manner of four footed beasts and the recollections of a busy life s must somehow live while he slowly the wilderness into fruitful fields and after spending some weeks at home i sought work at my trade in various directions finding a little first at n y and after an interval more at now county where i received per month for six weeks but my employer could afford to hire a no longer and i thence walked home across county january and remained a full month � a bitter cold one � with my father and brother but not very nor satisfactorily fully convinced that the life of a was one to which i was poorly adapted i made one more effort to resume my chosen calling having already exhausted the possibilities in the line of county i now visited pa where i found work in the office of the and was retained at s per month well into the summer tliis was the first newspaper whereon i was employed that made any money for its owner and thus had a value it liad been started twenty years or so before when and county were both peopled almost wholly by poor young men and it had grown with the until it had a substantial profitable patronage its proprietor mr joseph m now in the prime of life liad begun on the as a boy and grown up with it into general consideration and esteem his and at his house as was fit and i spent here five months and agreeably a raw youth of twenty years and knowing no one in the when i thus entered it i made acquaintances there who are still valued friends and before i left i was offered a in the concern which though i bad reasons for declining was none the less flattering as a mark of appreciation and confidence mr since represented his district in the of has received other proofs of the trust a year by lake regard of fellow and though he has retired from the still lives in the enjoyment of and general esteem dwells in my memory aa a place which started with too expectations and v as thus exposed to a sudden check from which it has never recovered from time to time its early dreams of greatness have been by a state canal by by coal mines and at length by the oil of the region not far south of it but they have never been fully it was rather a for 