MEMORIES OF THE 



know, but we did know that we were doing wrong — or at least 

 what our parents thought was wrong — and, as usual, the guilty 

 conscience made us cowards. 



Sundays after church we sometimes played under the mill on 

 the clean sawdust. One day father found down below the four 

 of diamonds. He brought it up, tacked it on the fender-post 

 and used it to mark some tallies of lumber on. He asked me 

 what it was — and I did not know. Whether he knew or not, he 

 did not say, and I did not ask. Squire Fox, coming into the 

 mill and seeing the card on the post, sang out, ''Where is the 

 rest of your pack, Deacon? You had better take down that 

 * four,' or somebody will come along with a 'five ' and take your 

 whole mill." 



As time went on, these radical New England prejudices wore 

 off and all kinds of games were tolerated. Of course, like most 

 other boys at the fool age, I tried to learn to chew and smoke 

 tobacco. 1 gave up chewing, together with everything inside of 

 me, on my first and only quid. At smoking I did but little 

 better, and it was with fear and trembling that I tackled a cigar 

 until long after I was twenty-one and had become a real man, 

 instead of a would-be one. 



Father used neither tobacco nor liquor and was a staunch 

 teetotaler and temperance man, and his house and the old 

 church building, of which he was a principal owner, were always 

 open to temperance lecturers. 



Coming to this church, I will give a short history of its 

 building, use and final disposition, as it was one of the unfortu- 

 nate things in the family history which brought toil, trouble and 

 vexation of spirit. 



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