18 



ioned as well, had been given by his father, proposed its demo- 

 lition and the erection of a smarter one on the site of it. 



But the father strenuously objected, saying, " Not in my day, 

 my son ; not in my day. That was the first minister's barn, and 

 never was it without hay and grain for the horse of the visitor 

 who came to see us. No, not in my day, my son, not in my 

 day." Has it ever occurred to you, ladies and gentlemen, that 

 in the old davs before the stage coach and the rail car, there was 

 in our New England towns, not only hospitality, but " horse- 

 -pitality" as well? It is a satisfaction to be able to state that a 

 new barn was erected upon another spot, and the old one pre- 

 served until the first two generations which had owned it, were 

 no longer living to witness its removal. 



The farm implements used by the first minister were rude, 

 clumsy, and of local manufacture. His plows were mainly of 

 wood, the soles and coulters only being of iron, though their 

 mould boards were usually plated with sheets of that metal. 



The village blacksmith made his nails, his axes, and his 

 chains, as also his clumsy pitchforks and flat tined manure 

 forks. His grain was thrashed by flails and winnowed by 

 exposure to the wind. His carts and sleds were generally con- 

 structed upon the farm and ironed by the blacksmith, the 

 wheels of the former having felloes three inches wide, tired 

 with short strips of flat iron. The wide rimmed wheel, shod 

 with a continuous tire of equal width, is of modern date. His 

 shovels were mainly of wood, having blades pointed with iron. 

 His harrows, made often of a forked tree, had teeth sometimes 

 of wood and sometimes of iron. 



Rude as were those implements, they were as good as those 

 of his neighbors. Better ones might, possibly, have been 

 obtained from Massachusetts, or from England. But, had he 

 been asked in later years why he had not sent thither for such, 

 his reply must have been very nearly in the words of the great 

 banker, George Peabody, to his friends, in allusion to his hav- 

 ing sawed wood at Stickney's Tavern, in Concord, one morn- 

 ing, to pay for his bed and board over night, " money was not 

 plenty with me then." Yet, then with these rude tools, the for- 

 est was successfully encountered and a comfortable living ex- 

 tracted from the soil. 



