offer my awakened and critical mind.
My reading and my Lawrence school-work had already taught me more than
Prudence knew--a fact we both inwardry--admitted and fiercely resented
from our different viewpoints. Beyond doubt I was a pert and trying
young person. I lost no opportunity to lead Prudence beyond her
intellectual depth and leave her there, and Prudence vented her chagrin
not alone upon me, but upon my little brother. I became a thorn in her
side, and one day, after an especially unpleasant episode in which Harry
also figured, she plucked me out, as it were, and cast me for ever from
her. From that time I studied at home, where I was a much more valuable
economic factor than I had been in school.

The second spring after our arrival Harry and I extended our operations
by tapping the sugar-bushes, collecting all the sap, and carrying it
home in pails slung from our yoke-laden shoulders. Together we made one
hundred and fifty pounds of sugar and a barrel of syrup, but here again,
as always, we worked in primitive ways. To get the sap we chopped a gash
in the tree and drove in a spile. Then we dug out a trough to catch the
sap. It was no light task to lift these troughs full of sap and empty
the sap into buckets, but we did it successfully, and afterward built
fires and boiled it down. By this time we had also cleared some of our
ground, and during the spring we were able to plow, dividing the work in
a way that seemed fair to us both. These were strenuous occupations
for a boy of nine and a girl of thirteen, but, though we were not
inordinately good children, we never complained; we found them very
satisfactory substitutes for more normal bucolic joys. Inevitably, we
had our little tragedies. Our cow died, and for an entire winter we went
without milk. Our coffee soon gave out, and as a substitute we made
and used a mixture of browned peas and burnt rye. In the winter we were
always cold, and the water problem, until we had built our well, was
ever with us.

Father joined us at the end of eighteen months, but though his presence
gave us pleasure and moral support, he was not an addition to our
executive staff. He brought with him a rocking-chair for mother and a
new supply of books, on which I fell as a starving man falls upon food.
Father read as eagerly as I, but much more steadily. His mind was always
busy with problems, and if, while he was laboring in the field, a new
problem presented itself to him, the im