1 6 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



the city would bring to-day nearly five dollars. The 

 wool was bought up by speculators in that time, and 

 the speculators were not extravagant. I remember 

 very well driving off upon a summer's afternoon, 

 mounted upon twelve great sacks of fleeces, and being 

 rather proud of my receipts, at the rate of twenty- 

 eight cents per pound. (The same wool would have 

 brought two years since eighty cents per pound.) 



After we disposed of the butter and the wool, and 

 during the late autumn months, came the cartage of 

 wood some eight miles to a port upon the river, at 

 which four dollars per cord was paid for good oak 

 wood, and five for hickory. At present rates of 

 labor, these are sums which would not pay for the 

 cutting and cartage. 



I must not forget the swine two or three vener- 

 able porkers, and in an adjoining pen a brood of 

 young shoats that would equip themselves in great 

 layers of fat, from the whey during the hot months, 

 and the yellow ears of corn with the first harvesting 

 of October. Day after day, through May, through 

 June, came the unwearied round of 'milking, of driv- 

 ing to pasture, of plowing, of planting ; day after day 

 the sun beat hotter on the meadows, on the plow- 

 land, on the reeking sty ; day after day the buds 

 unfolded the pink of orchards hung in flowery sheets 

 over the scattered apple trees ; the dogwood threw 



