used race.

Winter mornings were a time of trial for us all. It required stern
military command to get us out of bed before daylight, in a chamber
warmed only by the stove-pipe, to draw on icy socks and frosty boots and
go to the milking of cows and the currying of horses. Other boys did not
rise by candle-light but I did, not because I was eager to make a
record but for the very good reason that my commander believed in early
rising. I groaned and whined but I rose--and always I found mother in
the kitchen before me, putting the kettle on.

It ought not to surprise the reader when I say that my morning toilet
was hasty--something less than "a lick and a promise." I couldn't (or
didn't) stop to wash my face or comb my hair; such refinements seem
useless in an attic bedchamber at five in the morning of a December
day--I put them off till breakfast time. Getting up at five A. M. even
in June was a hardship, in winter it was a punishment.

Our discomforts had their compensations! As we came back to the house at
six, the kitchen was always cheery with the smell of browning flapjacks,
sizzling sausages and steaming coffee, and mother had plenty of hot
water on the stove so that in "half a jiffy," with shining faces and
sleek hair we sat down to a noble feast. By this time also the eastern
sky was gorgeous with light, and two misty "sun dogs" dimly loomed,
watching at the gate of the new day.

Now that I think of it, father was the one who took the brunt of our
"revellee." He always built the fire in the kitchen stove before calling
the family. Mother, silent, sleepy, came second. Sometimes she was just
combing her hair as I passed through the kitchen, at other times she
would be at the biscuit dough or stirring the pancake batter--but she
was always there!

"What did you gain by this disagreeable habit of early rising?"--This is
a question I have often asked myself since. Was it only a useless
obsession on the part of my pioneer dad? Why couldn't we have slept till
six, or even seven? Why rise before the sun?

I cannot answer this, I only know such was our habit summer and winter,
and that most of our neighbors conformed to the same rigorous tradition.
None of us got rich, and as I look back on the situation, I cannot
recall that those "sluggards" who rose an hour or two later were any
poorer than we. I am inclined to think it was all a convention of the
border, a custom which might very well have been broken by us all