COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 11 



disbursed its own share of the school appropriations. Bitter 

 and often sanguinary were the fights over this important ques- 

 tion; many and hard were the debates as to whether it should 

 be a ' ' writing school " or a * ' reading school, ' ' and how they could 

 make their share of the funds hold out. 



These districts also took care of their own roads, and most men, 

 rather than pay their taxes in cash, "worked out" their taxes 

 on the roads. So far as one can gather from the records the 

 roads were treated a good deal like a plowed field, and must 

 have been exceedingly poor. They were plowed every spring 

 and heaped up into the middle, with the intention of making a 

 watershed. 



The roads were a constant annoyance at all seasons mud 

 spring and fall, dust in the summer, and drifting snow in win- 

 ter. Complaint was made in a nearby town that a certain man 

 named Hildreth had put his stone wall so far into the road that 

 the drifting snow made it impassable. The road commissioner 

 warned Hildreth to remove the wall, which he refused to do. 

 So the wall was moved back by those working on the road. 

 Hildreth tore it down in the night and rebuilt it on the former 

 site. The wall was torn down again by the road commissioner, 

 and replaced where it belonged. It was then guarded by men 

 until the town met and voted that Hildreth leave his wall where 

 it should be, and write a letter of apology to the commissioner. 

 All this Hildreth did with a bad grace. 



A domestic amusement was a house or barn raising. To this 

 about every one in the town went, the men to do the actual 

 raising, the women and girls to prepare and serve the feast 

 which followed. Their hospitality was generally lavish. To 

 one who has never partaken of the delights which can be baked 

 in a brick oven, the tales of those so blessed seem more or less 

 like those of the ''Arabian Nights." A halo, formed of the 

 reminiscences of gay good times and the appetite of youth, is 

 put around these pleasures of a bygone day, making them shine 

 with a preternatural light. And at these raisings, besides the 

 baking and the roast meats, was there not cider and Medford 

 rum to make glad the heart of man ? 



Funerals and weddings were also legitimate social times, the 

 former to afford the luxury of woe, the latter of unalloyed joy. 



