Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1906-11-07
WAY UpN THE STATE OF MAINE
Dr. Porter Writes of Conditions in His
BOyhood Home.

EDITOR CENSOR: am way up in
| Maine, as the poet holman +. Day says,
and Holman comes up here to get ma
terial for his best stories My relatives
live mile from the great Oxford paper
mill whence all the postal cards eman-
ate from that we use and a carload of
them goes out daily from the mill. Ten
| thousand people live In Rumford Falls,
town of two or three families sixteen
years ago. But the forty.two thousand
hu-se power il the great fall of the An
| droscosgin neeocd only TO be hsrnessed
| H. draw Manufacturers here and great
pulp mills now turn out train loads of
/ paper weekly. yesterday took walk
| up into the valley where was born. A
railroad runs through my fathers farm
| to Rangely Lakes hauling mp tourists
and hauling down spruce and poplar for
postal card pulp. The soil is poor and
gravelly; yet by using fertilizer they
raise 800 bushels potatoes or rs bushels
corn on an acre. Qusck grass covers
the meadow land and the hay brings Is
/ to 90 dollars a ton 1t is all housed.
My nephew threshed 81 bushels oats
last week. 1t took FIVE men day to do
the task and cost five cents bushel for
| the threshing.
One is impressed with the fine, solid,
| durable work done on most of the old
dwelling houses hereabouts. But lum-
Der is becoming poor in quality and
high in price, and reinforced cement
buildings will be erected generation
hence The roof and floors will be of
cement four inches thick and the walls
of cement eight inches thick. all re in
forced with rods and wires of iron.
This is a stony country and 1t is won
derful how many fine durable stone cul
verts and walls one finds everywhere he
goes stayed last night with cousin,
one of the three county commissioners
who do the work that, in our county,
our thirty. three members of the county
board do. A hundred years ago his
farm was settled by a stone mason who
hewed from stone, human heads, wash
bowls, door rock, gate posts, etc and
who chiseled on great granite bouIders
the eleven commandments, his name
and the date Over the fire place was
chiseled January !, 1912. and he did
that the night his wife was over at my
grsndfather's, the night that my aunt
Lizzie was born. A man offered s75 for
the great oval gate post covered with
the commandments. 1t was refused.
1
for dinner and his daughter and anoth.
er young lady shouldered their rifles
and went with my brother to his bear
traps. No bear was caught but suppose
a cub had been trapped and the old bear
nearby, what an unearthly yell those
ladies would have given when Mrs.
Bruin came forward toward them My
brother had that experience once when
he caught cub, and Mrs. Bear came
for him month open. He fired and miss
ed; she came on and he had just time TO
reload his Winchester and fire and she
fell two rods away with hole between
her eyes. He has trapped only one bear
and Eve raccoons this fall.
The people are getting lees sociable
up this way and the apple pairing bees,
husking bees and "sbindigs" are almost
thing of the past Up river ten miles
the yonng men of two towns had q
shooting match which ended with a
supper Friday night. The losing side
paid for she supper A dance followed
She feast It was contest to determine
which to n could produce proof of the
most game killed this year. The plan
was something like this: Each side was
to bring all the trophies of the hunt 1t
could; a PARTRIDGE head might count 100
points, woodchuok skin 100, muskrat
100, coon or mink skin l. 600, deers head
5 900, bearskin 10, 600 points and SO on.
met a young man who had been down
below ard borrowed fifty dollars worth
of peltry for HE side, as borrowing is
permissible. My cousins robust daugh
ter who teaches the district school, went
t. the dance. i pity your pupils, to
nly, / said, as she came to the break
East table smiling II would not have
gone last night If had to teach today, ="
she said These Maine teachers haYe
always put so much heart and soul into
their work In the old school house
where this girl teaches the floor rises
from the recitation seats backward L
remember being seated on the hoor
there, nv back to the school, by the
teacher fifty wears ago Sixty five years
ago Camp Meeting" John Allen, the
hero of 365 camp meetings and the
grandfather of Madame Nordica preach.
ed there. One of my schoolmates there,
Chss. L Fox, of Haverhiil, Massachu'
setts, manufactures more slippers than
any establishment on earth except one
in Austria.
Coming down met a French funeral
procession of three teams The parents
had the half-grown coffin across their
lap and the mother was smoking big
meerschaum pipe. When they return
ed the father was sucking solace from
the same pipe By the roadside saw
the spot where one of Names eminent
jurists was reared Across the river he
and my father got the rudiments of an
education. My father told rle tnat
Judge Charles Walton, a member OF
congress in war times, and thirty. four
years on the supreme judicial bench,
when child carried potatoes to school
for his dinner and baked them in the
fireplace g V, PORTER
Rumford Falls Maine.