THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 



25 



changed, too, with the years, and the extension of rail- 

 road facilities and the opening of the many other 

 Western packing-houses have sadly diminished the great 

 droves of hogs; yet even I can remember more than 

 once seeing the turnpike black with droves containing 

 several hundred, and great herds of lowing cattle, and 

 flocks of hundreds of sheep as well, panting and bleat- 

 ing along on their way to the stockyards. 



How many memories there are that thus cluster 

 about an old house ! The customs and loves of years 

 ago are there — 1834. The old people now living in 

 It can tell of incidents that occurred in the first cam- 

 paign of Martin Van Buren; and the recollections of 

 the aunts go back even further, to a time when, as little 

 girls, they had listened to the tales of a neighbor, an 

 old woman then, who was the daughter of a soldier 

 of the Revolution. She had, as a child in New Jersey, 

 baked loaves of bread, very long, large loaves, for the 

 American soldiers; and once, when fired upon by the 

 British, she had jumped over a fence, and had fallen 

 as if dead, and had then been left there by them. The 

 old homestead, as I have said, is also itself practically 

 on the site of a log cabin built in pioneer days, and the 

 well In the yard dates back to the earliest settlements 

 In the Miami Valley. It has never been rewalled, and 

 Its moss-covered stone sides still contain the sweetest, 

 best of sparkling water In the world. When we hear 

 these tales, and think of these associations with the past, 

 It stirs our blood, and it is almost as If we were our- 

 selves thus joined In a way, and link by link, to the 

 very origin of the Republic. 



Afar off, at certain times, I used to (and can yet) 



