248 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



before I came, but Tommy found it dead. It lies there 

 stiff, and the poor cow feels awfully. Her dumb supplica- 

 tion to us to do something for the poor dead thing is very 

 touching. She goes to it, and then turns back and looks 

 at it and moans, as much as to say, " Can't something be 

 done?" She is doing well, and Tommy says will be all 

 right by the seventh milking. The horses are looking very 

 well. The colt got so fractious that he was compelled to 

 stop giving grain. He gives them alternate stalks and 

 hay. He says old Roan is very fond of the stalks. The 

 road goes across the hill, between the house and barn, and 

 Slade has just gone over it with a snowplough. It is town 

 meeting, but there will be a very light vote to-day. The 

 hens have not begun to lay yet. I had last night the first 

 solid, sound, unmitigated sleep for the last three months. 

 Tommy rolled the hot water thing all round in the bed 

 before I got into it. He has raised a hundred bushels 

 of ashes, and drawn five or six cords of wood from the 

 mountain, and several cords down in the new roadway. 

 I am going to try hard to sell the place this March. The 

 weather has been terribly cold here, and however it may 

 be in Minnesota, you may well congratulate yourselves 

 on having escaped from this chilling environment. I must 

 go back to New York to-morrow, if possible. Tommy is 

 "a-bilin"' dinner; the pork, cabbage, and potatoes are 

 walloping* away in the pot while he is shovelling out the 

 house. . . . Study to be quiet, and don't go out while it is 

 cold. 



The crowded occupations of the autumn and win- 



* An ancient and picturesque word : wallop, " to boil," Skeat ; " to 

 bubble up," Wright, Halliwell ; " to move quickly and with much agita- 

 tion," Jamieson's Scottish Diet. The Anglo-Saxon is up-weallan, to well 

 up, like a spring ; " aufivallen" Edward Miiller, Etym. Woerterb. d. Eng- 

 lischen Sprache ; " represents the sound of liquid in agitation," Wedgwood, 

 Etym. Diet. 



