FARMER'S HOME, PAST AND FUTURE. 205 



jogged off into the woods, cut down some birch, and perhaps 

 an oak, picked up some old soggy log, and perchance found 

 something better in some dead tree standing. This was 

 hauled home, and piled up in the dooryard, and perchance, 

 the next morning, had disappeared under a layer of snow, 

 from which the wood was dragged as it was wanted, cut, and 

 carried into the house after they had pounded off all the snow 

 that would pound off easily. The rest could be thawed oft", if 

 the wood for the night was piled near the fire. At other 

 places, where there was perhaps less thrift, a single tree would 

 be cut down, and " twitched up," as they called it, limbs and 

 all ; and this gradually disappeared : then another took its 

 place. The most thrifty farmers did make it a point to get 

 up wood in winter — generally the limbs of the cord-wood 

 they hauled to market — for summer use ; so that the good- 

 wives had dry wood, if ever, in hot summer-time. But fortu- 

 nate were those whose yards were not bare of wood before 

 haying was done, which in those days was late in August, 

 if not in September. I remember also, at the schoolhouse, 

 or schoolhouses (for I attended school in several districts, to 

 make the money go farther), each farmer furnished his pro- 

 portion of wood ; and I can see them now, as they came with 

 loads of green logs, and piled them up before the schoolhouse 

 door. Then the boy or young man whose turn it was to 

 build the fire next morning was excused to cut and split 

 logs for the next day's fire, and then, on a cold winter's morn- 

 ing, started before sunrise from his home, with an armful of 

 kindlings, to build a fire in the big fireplace of the old school- 

 house. If the lot fell upon a bungler, or worthless fellow, 

 then the big fireplace was surrounded with shivering urchins 

 and tearful girls suffering from the cold. The only redeem- 

 ing feature to all this was, that they made the fireplaces so 

 large in kitchen and schoolhouse, that, if the fire once begun 

 to burn in the huge pile of green wood, it made a heat that 

 dried the wood, and warmed all around it, and left a cheerful 

 remembrance of comfort, in contrast to the discomforts, that 

 remains to this day, and throws around the old fireplace a 

 halo of glory that scarcely belongs to it. 



In the second place, the farmers of that day, living where 

 pure air and pure water were plenty, ready-made to their 

 hands, too often managed to poison both of them, and sow 



