76 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



The timber and wood was disappearing so 

 rapidly by the time I was half-grown that body 

 cord-wood could be sold on the lake bank for $2.50 

 and $3 per cord and the last of the clearings there- 

 fore increased the receipts from the farm. In the 

 spring, after school was closed we boys prepared 

 the household wood, but we dodged the more 

 laborious task of cutting cord-wood in the forest. 

 To have it cut at first cost sixty cents and later 

 seventy-five cents per cord. On Saturdays not in- 

 frequently, I had to draw the cord-wood down to 

 the bank of the lake. A cord of green body sugar- 

 maple weighs about two tons, and since the sled 

 was arranged for a cord and that was considered 

 a load I, boy-like, proposed to haul as large loads 

 as the neighbors and I sometimes got stuck. I 

 was too small for such heavy labor and the team 

 was weak from standing unused during the winter, 

 so we sometimes stopped before we got fairly 

 started unless I had taken the precaution to place 

 some small round sticks under the sled before 

 loading. If the start was successful still there was 

 danger, for the lane often had one-sided snowbanks 

 and the fun of upsetting never fully balanced the 

 work of reloading, as a singing school upset did. 



