222 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



Behind the stove in the kitchen, fresh-papered 

 like the walls, stood the sweet-potato box (a sweet 

 potato must be kept dry and wafm), an ample, 

 ten-barrel box, full of Jersey sweets that were 

 sweet, long, golden, syrupy potatoes, grown 

 in the warm sandy soil of the "Jethro Piece." 

 Against the box stood the sea-chest, fresh with 

 the same paper and piled with wood. There was 

 another such chest in the living-room near the 

 old fireplace, and still another in grandfather's 

 work-room behind the "tern-plate" stove. 



But wood and warmth and sweet smells were 

 not all. There was music also, the music of life, 

 of young life and of old life grandparents, 

 grandchildren (about twenty-eight of the latter). 

 There were seven of us alone a girl at each 

 end of the seven and one in the middle, which is 

 Heaven's own mystic number and divine arrange- 

 ment. Thanksgiving always found us all at grand- 

 father's and brimming full of thanks. 



That, of course, was long, long ago. Things 

 are different nowadays. There are as many grand- 

 fathers, I suppose, as ever; but they don't make 

 brooms in the winter any more, and live on farms. 

 They live in flats. The old farm with its open 



