52 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



As to materials for clothing in my boyhood 

 there was scarcely less abundance than there was 

 of food supplies. The woods were full of small 

 fur-bearing animals; the beef hides were waiting 

 to be exchanged for leather; the wool, both white 

 and black, to be shorn from the heavy sheep; 

 feathers and down to be plucked when ripe from 

 the noisy geese and ducks; and better than all, 

 the flax in its bloom. 



The children were well and warmly clad in 

 stoutly made if not always perfectly fitting clothes. 

 One of my earliest memories is of a pair of new 

 shoes which I proudly put on in the kitchen where 

 they had been made by a travelling cobbler. The 

 uppers were made from my father's, or perhaps 

 my eldest brother's, boot-tops for men always 

 wore boots while boys, girls and women wore 

 shoes which were sometimes made from cast-off 

 boot-tops. The art of splitting leather was then 

 unknown. The travelling shoemaker might be 

 with us two or three weeks in the fall or early 

 winter, and he was very welcome, especially to the 

 boys. While he told us lots of new stories and 

 brought to us the flavor of the outside world, he 

 also gave us a chance to lay in a store of waxed 

 ends with which to sew leather covers on our home- 

 made baseballs which were of woolen yarn ravelled 



