232 EARLY DAY STORIES. 



threshing machines, gang plows, riding plows, modern style 

 harrows, disk harrows, horse rakes, horse cultivators, kero- 

 sene oil, gasoline, no power machines of any kind on the 

 farm, no electrical appliances of any kind, no telegraphs, 

 telephones, phonographs nor moving pictures, no bicycles, 

 automobiles, sleeping nor dining cars, no breech loading 

 guns nor fixed ammunition, no photographs, and in general 

 no knowledge of photography, no refined sugar excepting 

 what was known as loaf sugar, no evaporated fruits, no 

 canned fruits, vegetables, meats or fish, no packing houses, 

 no cured meat products excepting those cured on the farm, 

 no creameries, no incubators, no cold storage plants. In the 

 common school rooms no blackboards, no uniformity of text 

 books, no systematic arrangement of classes, and in most 

 states no county superintendents. No anesthetics for use in 

 surgery, and no knowledge of the germ theory of diseases. 

 No greenbacks nor national currency. No monopolies, no 

 great trusts nor combinations to control capital or products. 



How did people live? That is just what this article is 

 for — to tell how. Let us see — we go back seventy-six years, 

 at which time I was six years old. This story will be leaves 

 torn from my book of experience. 



In this narrative many things well remembered will be 

 passed over, those only being chosen that have left the 

 deepest impressions on the tablet of the memory, or that 

 best illustrate the manner of life of the people of those 

 times. 



My father had an old flint lock musket, of the pattern 

 used by the Americans in the war of 1812, which he seemed 

 to think a great deal of, probably because it was like the one 

 he had used while serving in the army. It was my delight 

 to play with the gun, and in this my father indulged me, 

 allowing me to pull back the hammer, and watch the sparks 

 as the flint fastened in the hammer came in contact with 



