10 HOW TO EDUCATE HORSES. 



of the bone and sinew portion of the people in New 

 England. Let me here say that I believe no class of 

 people in our country ever accomplished more by 

 hard, unremitting labor than the wives of our old 

 New England farmers. My mother's life was no ex- 

 ception to this rule. With her large hazel eyes, light 

 curly hair, and loving heart, she was the joy of my 

 boyhood's happy home ; and her departure to a 

 better land while we were living in Iowa, in 1871, 

 made a void in a home never to be filled. In this 

 connection I may state that my stepmother, Marcia 

 Densmore, of West Townsend, Vt., was all that one 

 not an own mother could be. Always to me very 

 kind, my recollections of her are of the most pleasing 

 character. 



My father, Charles F. Gleason, Jr., a native of Rhode 

 Island, was fully six feet in height, about two hundred 

 pounds in weight, with light complexion, blue eyes, 

 sandy beard, and very strong, his knees being double- 

 jointed. Parties in Dana, Mass., have seen him lift a 

 barrel holding forty-two gallons of cider from the 

 ground and elevate it so as to be able to drink out of the 

 bung-hole. He also, once, in North Dana, won a wager 

 of an oyster supper for a large number, by carrying a 

 man named Harrison Barrows, weighing 225 pounds 

 three fourths of a mile on his back. What made this 

 very hard to accomplish was the fact that the by- 

 standers poked so much fun at them, as they sped on 

 their eventful journey, that they were obliged to laugh 

 heartily all the way; yet my father offered to carry the 

 man back to the starting-point for one hundred and 

 fifty dollars without once letting him down, but could 

 get no takers. Almost every night, after a hard day's 

 work, with from fifteen to fifty neighbors and those 

 who would come from long distances for the fun, he 



