My Boyhood and Youth 



Scotland, father, like many other home- 

 seekers, burdened himself with far too much 

 luggage, as if all America were still a wilderness 

 in which little or nothing could be bought. One 

 of his big iron-bound boxes must have weighed 

 about four hundred pounds, for it contained an 

 old-fashioned beam-scales with a complete set 

 of cast-iron counterweights, two of them fifty- 

 six pounds each, a twenty-eight, and so on down 

 to a single pound. Also a lot of iron wedges, 

 carpenter's tools, and so forth, and at Buf- 

 falo, as if on the very edge of the wilderness, 

 he gladly added to his burden a big cast-iron 

 stove with pots and pans, provisions enough 

 for a long siege, and a scythe and cumbersome 

 cradle for cutting wheat, all of which he suc- 

 ceeded in landing in the primeval Wisconsin 

 woods. 



A land-agent at Kingston gave father a 

 note to a farmer by the name of Alexander 

 Gray, who lived on the border of the settled 

 part of the country, knew the section-lines, 

 and would probably help him to find a good 

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