chance to study. About the burned rnta 
were Diles of clean, yellowish hoards, a lit 
tie longer than shlngles-barrel staves, made 
by cutting the pine trees into sections at 
each whorl of branches, and using the d I - 
ferent lengths thus obtained for barrels 
dl The C aspect S of the Industry yhich Pjrtlo- 
ular v interested me was the evidence In 
S J"1 that men »tm wo** l« - 
like the hand weavers of a former cent y. 
I stepped Into a little shop before which ! 
«»*** °< »>ris a 
tary cooper at his wor)t. man was a i on e 
and rattle of machinery - ® No spe - 
with his wo ^ h ; r nd na ^owln/both the mind 
ciallzation, i '. d ha if a dozen distinct 
vWch de - 
m A n s d I d wa?cS en the man make a barrel.^ 
discovered that a^cojPjr J ^chan instinc- 
TVenne for composition that they fit, 
tlve feeling for comp fect whole, 
when bound togethe^ Int ^ ^ 
M 1 width as the poet for the mot juste. 
P Thus in following the Squannacook to its 
source I had found the sources of other 
thlnsrs as well. I know now- that a nail keg 
has sprung from the pine plains of Town¬ 
send and can picture in my mind s eye its 
course through the sawmill and the hands 
of the silent, thoughtful cooper. 
When the pines are cut off from a sandy 
plain, gray birch springs up in their place. 
I had always supposed that gray Schwas 
good for nothing except to grow aphids for 
black-poll warblers to feed on, but in Tow n- 
send I learned to respect even the gray 
birch In another yard beyond that of the 
cooper I saw oundles of gray birch poles 
about six feet long, and near the door of a 
little shop, heaps of long white shavings. 
When I had knocked and entered, I found a 
little bent Irishman seated on a low stool, 
almost buried in piles of the same long 
shavings that j. had seen outside the door. 
He held in front of him a birch pole, which 
had 'been split lengtnwise. It lay, bark 
down, on a beam which stretched from his 
stool to the opposite wall about breast high. 
The birch was held firmly to the beam by a 
clamp which he controlled by a footboard, 
or treadle, under the beam. In his hands he 
held a two-handled knife, which he was 
drawing toward him over the birch sapling, 
through the knots, leaving a thin but tough 
strip of even thickness. This he finished at 
each end into what he called the- lap, and 
then laid it into a rack at his side where 
lay about a hundred similar strips. These 
strips I recognized as the hoops which I 
had seen my friend, the cooper, binding 
around the staves, lapping and locking them 
together. 
My Irish hoop-maker, like most soli¬ 
tary workers, seemed glad of company, 
and showed me all the tools and processes 
of his craft. He showed me the cleats on 
the floor from which he measures the 
poles to different lengths; from the 
farthest cleat to the chopping block 
makes a six-foot hoop. “Now a man,” he 
said, "can't be measured so easy-like. 
There was Gineral Grant now; he didn’t 
measure up to six-foot length, but you 
would be making a mistake to cast him 
aside for that.” With an adze he started 
to split a pole, and then showed mo a 
hook, driven into a bench, with which ho 
hehl the lower half of the pole, while he 
gradually pulled the upper half off. He 
told me that this hook was a compara¬ 
tively recent improvement; in his younger 
days he had split thousands of poles by 
bending over and holding the lower half 
to the floor with one foot, and then when 
his back could stand it no longer, stand¬ 
ing erect and tearing them apart with 
the adze. 
He had lived sixty years in Townsend 
and could remember when there were no 
“foreigners” in the village, “nobody but 
Americans and Irish.” The French-Cana- 
dians and Down Easters were coming in 
now and threatening to get complete 
control. 
For a bundle of a hundred hoops he 
got seventy cents, and in his younger 
days, he had split, in a twelve-hour day, 
seven bundles. But he reminded me that 
this did not mean earning $5 a day. First 
the young birches must be cut and 
hauled, and unless one owned his own 
birch lot, as he did now, the standing 
birches had to be paid for. The black 
poll warblers after all have an easier 
time; they get their living from the gray 
birches and ask no man's leave. 
The little hoop maker was not the only 
interesting importation from Ireland into 
Townsend. Near the railroad track just 
below West Townsend, there is a boggy 
hillside, nearly overgrown with Scotch 
heather, the true European heather. I was 
directed to it by a number of people, for 
it is one of the well-known sights of the 
town. When I entered the field, I saw 
numerous spade marks, showing that lov¬ 
ers of the flowers had dug a clump here and 
there, and transferred it to their gardens. 
I succeeded in tracing the heather also to 
its source. Thirty years ago two sisters 
from Townsend, revisiting the family home 
In the north of Ireland, gathered a handful 
of heather, while on their way to Dundalk, 
the seaport from which they were to sail. 
The heather, though still in bloom, bore 
ripe seed. On their return to Townsend, it 
occurred to them to strew the seed in a 
cranberry bog on their farm. Two or three 
years later they were surprised to discover 
small but vigorous plants of heather among 
the cranberry vines. Heather has hem found 
In several other localities in Massachusetts 
and also in Maine, New Hampshire and 
Rhode Island, and for many years botanists 
believed that in some spots, at any rate, the 
plant was native. But it would be very 
natural for Scotch or Trish emigrants to J 
bring over, as here in Townsend, a plant 
so characteristic of their native moors, and 
the ease with which it was grown from 
seed in this locality makes it seem more 
likely that elsewhere it has been either 
accidentally brought in or that the story of 
its introduction has been lost. 
There is no danger of the heather being 
exterminated; the patch is large already, 
and is constantly spreading. The people 
who told me about it spoke of the decrease 
of the mayflower, due to Its exportation j 
from Townsend; large quantities are sent 
each spring to a Boston florist. Let us 
hope that sentiment will before long fo.-ce 
a law to prevent its public sale, at any 
rate, on the streets. 
I wanted to ask the school children 
