118 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



and it did not stand in the right place. He had seen two or 

 three barns, and had heard of several others, which had cellars 

 under them, and had thought the matter over a good deal, and 

 had made up his mind that whenever he built a barn, he would 

 have a cellar under it. He had not the means of paying for 

 his barn in cash, but he determined to set about it and do what 

 he could towards accomplishing it with his own hands. So in 

 the early part of the winter, he purchased a lot of standing 

 trees, and hired his brother to work with him. They cut down 

 the trees, and hauled the board logs to the mill, to be sawn 

 into boards and plank, and cut the smaller timber into suitable 

 dimensions for a barn sixty feet by forty, and hauled it liome 

 and hewed it. This, with the care of the cattle and hogs, kept 

 him busy through the Avintcr. In the early spring, they dug 

 the cellar and laid the walls, and hauled the boards from the 

 mill, and by the commencement of hay time, the new barn was 

 ready for the hay. The barn was not clapboarded nor painted, 

 nor furnished with ventilators, or blinds, or the many appliances 

 which fancy barns of the present time so often exhibit. In 

 short, it was not built in the style in which he has since built a 

 hundred foot barn. But it was as good as he could afford, and 

 indeed he had to hire three hundred dollars of 'Squire Jones, to 

 enable him to pay the carpenters, and for the shingles and nails. 

 But it was a great improvement on the old barn, which, the next 

 winter, was pulled down and converted into a shed and hog sty. 

 The next year he shingled his house, and in the course of two 

 years he had paid his borrowed money, and was again free from 

 debt. He had for sometime had his eye upon a lot of land 

 containing about twenty acres, half pasture land and half 

 covered with a growth of young hard wood, which lay at a 

 convenient distance from his house. The following winter he 

 purchased this lot for three hundred dollars, and agreed to pay 

 one hundred dollars a year until it was paid for. The first year 

 he cut off thirty cords of wood, and ran a fence across the lot, 

 so that he might use the pasturage, and sowed three acres of 

 rye. His wood when cut, was worth three dollars a cord, and 

 he raised forty-five bushels of rye, worth a dollar a bushel. By 

 the sale of the wood and the rye, he was able to pay the first 

 instalment and the interest, and had rye enough left for the use 

 of his family. He had been in the habit, from the commence- 



