word. I
did not vary more than five minutes from one o'clock all winter, nor
did I feel any bad effects whatever, nor did I think at all about the
subject as to whether so little sleep might be in any way injurious;
it was a grand triumph of will-power over cold and common comfort and
work-weariness in abruptly cutting down my ten hours' allowance of
sleep to five. I simply felt that I was rich beyond anything I could
have dreamed of or hoped for. I was far more than happy. Like Tam o'
Shanter I was glorious, "O'er a' the ills o' life victorious."

Father, as was customary in Scotland, gave thanks and asked a blessing
before meals, not merely as a matter of form and decent Christian
manners, for he regarded food as a gift derived directly from the
hands of the Father in heaven. Therefore every meal to him was a
sacrament requiring conduct and attitude of mind not unlike that
befitting the Lord's Supper. No idle word was allowed to be spoken at
our table, much less any laughing or fun or story-telling. When we
were at the breakfast-table, about two weeks after the great golden
time-discovery, father cleared his throat preliminary, as we all knew,
to saying something considered important. I feared that it was to be
on the subject of my early rising, and dreaded the withdrawal of the
permission he had granted on account of the noise I made, but still
hoping that, as he had given his word that I might get up as early as
I wished, he would as a Scotchman stand to it, even though it was
given in an unguarded moment and taken in a sense unreasonably
far-reaching. The solemn sacramental silence was broken by the dreaded
question:--

"John, what time is it when you get up in the morning?"

"About one o'clock," I replied in a low, meek, guilty tone of voice.

"And what kind of a time is that, getting up in the middle of the
night and disturbing the whole family?"

I simply reminded him of the permission he had freely granted me to
get up as early as I wished.

"I _know_ it," he said, in an almost agonized tone of voice, "I _know_
I gave you that miserable permission, but I never imagined that you
would get up in the middle of the night."

To this I cautiously made no reply, but continued to listen for the
heavenly one-o'clock call, and it never failed.

After completing my self-setting sawmill I dammed one of the streams in
the meadow and put the mill in operation. This invention was speedily
followed by a lot of other