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and for flannel sheets. We knit our own socks and stockings. I 

 would al\A'ays rise in the morning at four or I'.alf past, winter and 

 snninier, and have bnilt my own fires, milked from four to eight 

 cows, prepared the breakfast and liad it at six. Until al)ont ten 

 years ago we made butter and since then liave sent it to a factory. 

 I always did my own churning, and many are the books of poems, 

 histories, stories and newspapers I liave read through while churn- 

 ing. I am the mother of eight children, five of whom are living. 

 The others died when small. The oldest living is thirty-six and the 

 youngest is tw^elve. Three of them have gi'aduated from high 

 school and been a number of terms at an academy. One has been 

 for five years at Cornell University. I have always done my own 

 washing and weaving of carpets as I have a large house and it is 

 furnished with rag carpets. I make my own garden and have 

 helped raked hay and husk corn. One fall alone I husked between 

 five and six hundred bushels. I had one daughter and she was at 

 home at that tiine ; so I did no housework while husking, although 

 I attended to the milk and butter, milked and got breakfast. One 

 summer I piled up one hundred cords of wood and did my own 

 housework. You will say there was no call for this. We were 

 married the first year of the Civil War. In '63 my husband was 

 drafted, paid his $300 and stayed at home. That had to be met in 

 liard times for the farmer. Not many modern wives would think 

 they could pull flax, cut corn, dig potatoes and do all things on a 

 farm that we used to do. All this time I had a hired girl only a 

 year and a half. We made our own table linen and toweling, spin- 

 ning and weaving it, and our flannel dresses. I did not find much 

 time to gossip wnth neighbors, but have been with the sick a great 

 deal, and always went to church and Sunday school and attended 

 societies which belonged to the church. To day I can walk a mile 

 or more as quickly as any one. At the present time I liave two old 

 people to care for ; one of them is eighty-six and the other is eighty- 

 three. There are five in our family, and I am doina: all the work 

 myself, and am going to take the teacher to board next year. So 

 you see work does not kill and there must have been some calcula- 

 tion to save steps.. My husband says, ' You helped earn and saved 



511 



