20 BY MEADOW AND STREAM. 



casting and catching than after a broad hiatus of 

 almost sixty years I can boast of being now. 



The days of my boyhood passed rapidly away, and 

 at the age of fifteen I had to quit school and the old 

 home for other scenes and other experiences. 



My father was an only son, and the last of his race 

 until his own sons were born ; his descendants now 

 number about eighty. 



My mother had seven brothers and five sisters. 

 All lived to be married ; and now, in the year of 

 grace 1896, there is only one solitary male descendant 

 bearing their name, and he, now a lad of sixteen, 

 narrowly escaped coming into this world at all ; his 

 father never married till he was sixty-five, and died 

 very soon after this son was born. 



Two of my uncles had died before I came on the 

 stage, but five of them I knew well. They were all 

 substantial, well-to-do farmers, fine stalwart, honest, 

 God-fearing men ; the old homestead from which 

 they sprang had been in the family certainly for 

 nearly three hundred years, as an old family Bible 

 and tombstones in the churchyard testify. They all 

 lived within a circle of twenty miles from our home, and 

 one of the joys of our boyhood was to go a-Christ- 

 masing by turns to these jolly farmers. 



WE GO A-CHRISTMASING. 



We had two ponies between four of us, and we 

 travelled on the plan of "Ride and Tie." Two 

 horsemen would gallop on for two or three miles ; 

 then dismount, tie their steeds to a roadside-gate and 

 walk or run on. When the pedestrians came up, 



